What is Money 「货币的本质」是一档由 Robert Breedlove 主持的播客，Michael Saylor 在 2020 年至 2021 年之间作为最初的嘉宾参与了该节目。
很多人提到 Saylor 或 MicroStrategy，可能跟我一样，第一反应会觉得其很疯狂，甚至觉得他是一个“赌徒”。然而，在听到这个系列的播客之后，我却惊叹于其思维和认知的深刻。从来没想过一个讨论比特币与货币的播客，能“闲扯”出这么丰富的内容。
播客的闲谈本质让对话内容更轻松随意，但其中实际有很多内容值得反复回味甚至收藏。因此有人把这个系列的音频，整理编辑校对成了电子书。
我为了快速了解这个系列的内容，将这个电子书使用 DeepSeek V3 翻译成中文版，并转换成了中文有声书。这个电子书的作者还自己整理了每个章节的 Key Insights。我把它们摘抄收藏在这篇博客中，一来相关内容在互联网上就算有了中文副本，二来便于我自己时常翻看。
下面引用 Robert Breedlove 对该系列播客的介绍，也可以作为我对该系列播客的评价。
So I promise you that you’ll find — despite the time it may take you — you’re gonna find this extremely intellectually satisfying, perhaps even philosophically satisfying. We go really deep on a lot of topics. So I hope you enjoy it. And I firmly believe the insights that come out of this will actually reshape your worldview.
所以我向你保证，尽管可能需要一些时间，但你会发现这极其令人智识上满足，甚至可能在哲学层面上也感到满足。我们会深入探讨许多话题。因此，我希望你能享受其中。我坚信，从中获得的洞见将重塑你的世界观。
希望以后能够可以整理出我自己的 highlights 和 comments。
Chapter 1 | The Rise of Man Through the Stone and Iron Ages
第一章 | 人类在石器与铁器时代的崛起
Three primal technologies helped us build everything: fire, missiles, hydraulics.
三种原始技术助我们构建万物：火、投射物、液压系统。
All energy is essentially solar.
一切能量本质上都源自太阳。
There’s never been a fair fight. The way humans out-compete in nature is by engaging in predetermined unfair fights. We ensure we have an asymmetric advantage to preserve ourselves and obtain the most energy for the lowest energy expenditure.
从未有过公平的较量。人类在自然界中胜出的方式，就是通过预设不对等的战斗。我们确保拥有不对称优势以保全自身，并以最低能耗获取最多能量。
The Romans became dominant due to their self-organization. They realized the value of an established protocol. There’s a connection between protocol standardization and economic output and prosperity.
罗马人因自我组织能力而崛起。他们认识到既定协议的价值。协议标准化与经济产出及繁荣之间存在着深刻关联。
The basic credo of an engineer: “I look at nature, and I look at the circumstances that I’m surrounded by, and I use my intellect and every material and technique at hand in order to construct a better world for everyone and everything that I love. I’m not going to be a victim of circumstance. I’m going to change my circumstances with my intellect.”
工程师的基本信条：“我观察自然，审视周遭环境，运用智慧与一切可用的材料技术，为我所爱之人与万物构建更美好的世界。不做环境的囚徒，要以智慧重塑境遇。”
Societies that deeply respect natural law tend to succeed and out-compete others.
那些深刻尊重自然法则的社会往往能够取得成功并在竞争中脱颖而出。
Chapter 2 | The Rise of Man through the Dark and Steel Ages
第二章 | 人类在黑暗与钢铁时代的崛起
Money is a network of trust, and that’s why the state has always fought to control and monopolize it, because it gives them essentially unlimited power and wealth to be able to confiscate that from the entirety of their citizens.
货币是一张信任网络，正因如此，国家始终试图掌控并垄断它，因为通过从全体公民手中攫取货币控制权，实质上能赋予统治者无限的权力与财富。
We collapsed fixed costs by standardization.
我们通过标准化降低了固定成本。
The #1 export of an empire is security. That’s what the US is today — we export security. Bitcoin fits into that picture because its #1 value proposition is security of your time and energy in a medium that cannot be compromised. For the first time in history, we have a place to secure our life force, our wealth, that is independent of any political happenings in the world. It’s an apolitical money, which is very essential to its value proposition.
一个帝国的首要出口品是安全保障。这正是当今美国的角色——我们输出安全。比特币与之契合，因为它最核心的价值主张在于以无法被篡改的媒介保障你的时间和精力安全。历史上首次，我们拥有了一个独立于全球任何政治动荡、能够守护生命能量与财富的载体。这种非政治化的货币特性，正是其价值主张的根本所在。
Kraft, Hersheys, and Post foods were in the business of selling stabilized energy. Food is inherently unstable, especially before the invention of the refrigerator, and these innovators figured out how to stabilize food energy at room temperature.
卡夫、好时和 Post 食品公司从事的是稳定能量销售的生意。食物本身具有不稳定性，尤其在冰箱发明之前，而这些创新者找到了在室温下稳定食物能量的方法。
The freezer and refrigerator enabled us to suck the entropy out of food and store food energy over extremely long periods of time. By contrast, fiat currency is a high-entropy storage device. It leaks a lot. It suffers from spoilage over time, whereas Bitcoin could be considered the deep freeze, the absolute zero of storing monetary energy. It sucks all the entropy out of it, and you know that you’ll own a guaranteed fraction of the money supply for all time.
冷冻柜和冰箱让我们能够从食物中抽离熵，将食物能量长期储存。相比之下，法定货币是一种高熵存储媒介。它存在大量损耗，会随时间推移而贬值，而比特币则可被视为货币能量的深度冷冻库、绝对零度储存器。它彻底消除了所有熵变，确保你永久持有货币供应量中固定比例的份额。
Bitcoin is the best branded asset in history, because Bitcoin does do exactly what it says it will do. Nothing less, nothing more. And there’s no element of human corruption that can change that. Bitcoin is this leaderless institution that just runs the rules of the protocol, and it doesn’t change, it doesn’t bend.
比特币是史上品牌价值最高的资产，因为它严格践行承诺，不增不减。任何人为腐败都无法改变这一点。比特币作为无领导者的制度体系，只遵循协议规则运行，永不改变，永不妥协。
One of the most important discoveries in the history of man, penicillin, came from an accident. So we need to optimize society for free exchange and experimentation — that’s how we create the wealth in the world, solve problems and increase life expectancy.
人类历史上最重要的发现之一——青霉素，就源于一次意外。因此我们需要构建一个鼓励自由交换与实验的社会机制，这才是创造世界财富、解决问题并延长人类寿命的根本之道。
Chapter 3 | Technology Themes through History — Harder, Smarter, Faster, Stronger
第三章 | 贯穿历史的技术主题——更硬核、更智能、更快速、更强大
Defensive attributes tend to be even more important than offensive attributes. If you are optimized for survivability, that tends to make you a dominant competitor over time.
防御性特质往往比进攻性特质更为关键。若以生存能力为优化目标，长期来看这往往能使你成为行业主导者。
Bitcoin has dominated the digital space for monetary networks. It’s impossible to compete with it as money because it’s already perfected all the properties of money, and it’s done so in this digital terrain that all other competitors would be competing for: it’s a very low friction domain, so you can move things at the speed of light in the digital space. And you can defend things with cryptography at very low cost. It gives us a way to store the vital life energy that is money behind a wall that cannot be breached.
比特币在数字货币网络领域占据主导地位。作为货币，它已臻完美，具备货币的所有属性，且在这片所有竞争者觊觎的数字疆域中独占鳌头：这是一个摩擦极低的领域，能以光速传输价值，并可以极低成本通过密码学进行防护。它为我们提供了一种方式，将作为生命活力源泉的货币存储于无法攻破的壁垒之后。
Like the moon in the sci-fi novel, digital space is the ultimate high ground. It enables you to safeguard billions of dollars of capital, which is life force, by memorizing a 12-word seed phrase. You can move it around the world at the speed of light, permissionless, at virtually zero cost, unlike the fiat system.
如同科幻小说中的月球，数字空间是终极制高点。仅需记住 12 个单词的助记词，你就能守护价值数十亿美元的生命能量资本。与法币体系不同，你可以无需许可、近乎零成本地以光速在全球转移这些价值。
We don’t need nation states to honor the property rights of money anymore. That entire function of trust and security has fallen to distributed software. Bitcoin is a permissionless medium for storing your wealth in a way to no one can compromise. You’ve converted property rights to information.
我们不再需要民族国家来保障货币的财产权。信任与安全的全部职能已交由分布式软件承担。比特币是一种无需许可的财富存储媒介，无人能够染指。你将财产权转化为了信息形态。
It’s the tinkerers and not the theoreticians that bring about breakthrough.
带来突破的是那些动手实践者，而非理论家。
Chapter 4 | Bitcoin: The First Digital Monetary Energy Network
第四章 | 比特币：首个数字货币能源网络
Money is the highest form of energy that human beings can channel.
货币是人类所能调动的最高级能量形式。
Bitcoin is the most efficient system for channeling energy through time and space in the history of mankind.
比特币是人类有史以来最有效的跨越时空传导能量的系统。
Bitcoin is a lossless energy network.
比特币是一个无损的能量网络。
The best case for a gold network is you’re gonna lose 90% of your energy over 100 years. But the likely case is you’re gonna lose 95-98% of your energy over 100 years.
黄金网络最乐观的情况是，一百年内你将损失 90%的能量。但更可能的是，这一百年间你会损失 95%至 98%的能量。
It’s a crippling intellectual mistake to run a monetary standard on a commodity that can be produced by man.
以人类可生产的商品作为货币标准运行，是一种严重的智力错误。
Chapter 5 | Channeling Monetary Energy Across Time and Space
第五章 | 跨越时空的货币能量传导
It can be very expensive and cumbersome to move fiat currency across different jurisdictional domains—which inhibits fiat’s original purpose, which was to increase the portability of money.
跨司法管辖区转移法定货币可能成本高昂且手续繁琐——这违背了法定货币最初旨在提升货币便携性的初衷。
Bitcoin can absorb superior competitive features from the marketplace. It can actually repair or improve itself in a way that makes it even stronger than its original form.
比特币能够吸收市场中更优越的竞争特性。它实际上能以自我修复或优化的方式，变得比最初形态更强大。
Think of the SHA-256 algorithm as an encrypted vacuum sealing of the monetary energy stored in the Bitcoin network. It gives it this super-high resistance to impurities or uncertainty or nefarious actors (like central banks). It gets the uncertainty out of your money.
将 SHA-256 算法想象成对比特币网络中存储的货币能量进行加密真空密封。它赋予货币极高的抗杂质、抗不确定性及抗恶意行为者（如中央银行）的能力，彻底消除了货币中的不确定性。
Bitcoin is even more valuable than a standard insurance policy in that it has no counterparty risk. It’s money that is maximally resistant to political risks at all scales. If you’re holding cash in a form that can’t be confiscated, inflated, stopped, then no matter what eventuality you encounter or what circumstances you encounter in dealing with the uncertainties of life, you have a pool of pure capital optionality with Bitcoin. And that cannot be said for any other asset. There is no other money that can provide you that degree of assurance.
比特币甚至比标准保险单更有价值，因为它不存在对手方风险。这是一种在各个层面都最大限度抵抗政治风险的货币。如果你持有的现金形式无法被没收、通胀或冻结，那么无论生活中遭遇何种变故或不确定性，比特币都能为你提供纯粹的资本选择权。这是其他任何资产都无法比拟的，没有其他货币能给予你这种程度的保障。
Sovereignty is simply the authority to act as one sees fit, the ability to conduct an action consistent with your purpose or aims. Bitcoin is the only money in history that maximizes our ability to do that.
主权简单来说就是按照自身意愿行事的权威，即能够根据目标或意图采取行动的能力。比特币是历史上唯一能最大限度实现这种能力的货币。
Territory is the most decisive factor in determining the outcome of any battle (Sun Tzu). And as Bitcoiners, the moral, intellectual, and philosophical high ground that we occupy is virtually unassailable.
疆域是决定任何战役胜负的最关键因素（孙子兵法）。作为比特币的信徒，我们所占据的道德、智识与哲学高地几乎坚不可摧。
Bitcoin is a high-frequency store of value and a low-frequency medium of exchange. Every second you’re holding Bitcoin, it’s performing its function. Anyone that’s saying Bitcoin doesn’t have utility, they don’t understand inflation. They don’t understand store of value.
比特币是高频的价值存储工具和低频的交易媒介。你持有比特币的每一秒，它都在履行其职能。那些声称比特币没有效用的人，根本不理解通货膨胀，也不理解价值存储的本质。
Bitcoin is extensible, which means its protocol is adaptable. You can add other features to it, you can build businesses on top of it, you can connect APIs to it. There’s a great degree of programmability that Bitcoin enables that something like gold just does not.
比特币具有可扩展性，这意味着其协议具备适应性。你可以为其添加其他功能，可以在其上构建商业生态，还能连接各类 API 接口。比特币实现了黄金等传统资产无法企及的高度可编程性。
Bitcoin is the first monetary network that maps perfectly onto thermodynamics.
比特币是首个完美映射热力学原理的货币网络。
Chapter 6 | Digital Gold: Harder, Smarter, Stronger, and Faster
第六章 | 数字黄金：更硬核、更智能、更强大、更迅捷
Bitcoin is the hardest money that’s ever existed because it’s the most adaptive to entropy. It’s the most antifragile money we’ve ever had.
比特币是有史以来最坚硬的货币，因为它最能适应熵增。这是我们拥有过的最具反脆弱性的货币。
A good defense doesn’t necessarily matter if there is a gate or a gatekeeper because you can bribe the gatekeeper. Bitcoin outcompetes the legacy system because the latter is built on gatekeepers. That’s what central banks and governments are: gatekeepers for the flows of economic vitality or monetary energy.
如果存在大门或守门人，再好的防御也可能无济于事，因为你可以贿赂守门人。比特币之所以能胜过传统体系，正是因为后者建立在守门人制度之上。中央银行和政府本质上就是经济活力或货币能量流动的守门人。
The more monetary energy is stored on the Bitcoin network, the more incentivized all network participants are to defend it. Even outside of Bitcoin there are massive incentives to develop quantum resistant encryption in response to a quantum computing breakthrough.
比特币网络上存储的货币能量越多，所有网络参与者就越有动力去捍卫它。甚至在比特币之外，面对量子计算的突破，开发抗量子加密技术也存在着巨大的激励。
For the first time there’s the possibility of facilitating a yield curve for Bitcoin.
比特币首次具备了构建收益率曲线的可能性。
Gold will always suffer from the oracle problem. You’ll always need to ultimately trust the custodian of the gold at the end of that chain of security features, whereas Bitcoin can be directly integrated with software security features.
黄金始终无法摆脱预言机问题——你最终仍需信任层层安保措施背后的黄金托管方，而比特币可直接与软件安全功能整合。
In the Bitcoin ecosystem, trade and settlement are now effectively the same thing — you can demand final settlement 24/7 to and from anywhere in the world.
在比特币生态中，交易与结算现已合二为一，你可以随时随地要求全球范围内的最终结算。
Bitcoin has collapsed money into Constitutionally protected speech.
比特币已将货币压缩为受宪法保护的言论。
Chapter 7 | The Virtues of Strong Money
第七章 | 强势货币的美德
Bitcoin has the highest bandwidth price discovery, transparency, and security of any asset in the world.
比特币拥有全球所有资产中最高的价格发现带宽、透明度和安全性。
Bitcoin’s paradox: By being totally open to inspection, Bitcoin actually resists manipulation—or even emulation—in that everything about it is out in the open.
比特币的悖论在于：通过完全公开透明，它反而能有效抵御操纵甚至模仿——因为其所有机制都暴露在阳光下。
Satoshi was clearly an individual sensitive to the negative socioeconomic consequences of central banking, and his own sensitivity was a response to the sensitivity of others: People who had been marginalized or victimized by the system throughout the ages. You could call that a form of inflammation in the socioeconomic super-organism. Thus, Satoshi was the cell of the organism that figured it out. He figured out the correct defensive response, launching it into the world in the right way, at the right time.
中本聪显然深刻意识到央行体系对社会经济的负面影响，他的觉醒正是对历代被体制边缘化或伤害群体的回应。这种集体创伤可视为社会经济超有机体中的炎症反应。而中本聪，就是这个有机体中率先找到解决方案的细胞——他在正确的时间以正确的方式，向世界释放了这个防御性应答机制。
Real estate is the easiest thing in the world to tax because you can’t hide it, and that is the dominion on which the government projects its power.
房地产是世界上最容易征税的标的，因为它无法隐匿，政府正是通过对土地的掌控来投射其权力疆域。
Bitcoin is kind of like a single-celled organism. You don’t want it to be a vertebrate with all these complex features, because they open you up to more risk and attack surface. What you want is something very unidimensional, single-cell, that just holds value in a trust-minimized way across time and space. And that’s what Bitcoin is. That is the big breakthrough.
比特币就像一种单细胞生物。你并不希望它成为拥有所有复杂特征的脊椎动物，因为那样会暴露更多风险和攻击面。你需要的是一种非常单一、单细胞的东西，它仅以最小化信任的方式跨越时空保存价值。这就是比特币的本质，也是其重大突破所在。
Satoshi took away all the indivisibility, all of the decomposability, all of the unrecognizability, all of the immovability, and all of the unpredictability from money. He removed all these negative aspects of money to deliver us the quasi-perfection that is Bitcoin. And that speaks again to this minimization of attack surface. You’ve reduced all of the features of money to strip it down to its bare bones. Bitcoin achieved attack surface minimization via monetary property optimization. This is via negativa: The principle that we know what is wrong with more clarity than what is right, and that knowledge grows by subtraction.
中本聪剔除了货币所有不可分割性、可分解性、不可识别性、不可移动性以及不可预测性的缺陷。他移除了货币所有这些负面特性，为我们带来了近乎完美的比特币。这再次体现了攻击面最小化的理念——你将货币的所有特性精简至最基础形态。比特币通过货币属性优化实现了攻击面最小化，这正是否定法（via negativa）的体现：我们更清晰地知道什么是错的而非什么是对的，知识通过减法增长。
The lesser feature set of Bitcoin is a feature itself, not a bug, because its whole value proposition is survivability. It cannot be stopped.
比特币较少的功能集本身就是一种特性而非缺陷，因为它的核心价值主张在于生存能力——它无法被阻止。
Bitcoin as religion — the question comes naturally: What are its values? Truth, natural law, thermodynamics, self-reliance, honesty, fairness, technology, self-sovereignty — all of these things are embedded in the value system of true Bitcoiners, and they carry that into the world in their word, in their deed, in their investments.
比特币作为宗教——这个问题自然而然浮现：它的价值观是什么？真理、自然法则、热力学、自力更生、诚实、公平、技术、自我主权——所有这些都深深植根于真正比特币信徒的价值体系中，他们通过言语、行动和投资将这些价值观带入世界。
Chapter 8 | Bitcoin and Immortal Sovereignty
第八章 | 比特币与不朽的主权
The only market-proven crypto network in the world today is non-state digital store of value: Bitcoin.
当今世界唯一经过市场验证的加密网络是非主权数字价值存储工具：比特币。
The ability to do a minor transaction, it’s trivially inconsequential. Only 1–2% of your wealth needs to be in these high frequency transactions. So a logical thing for anybody is just to keep 1, 2, 3% of their wealth in fiat.
进行小额交易的能力微不足道。你只需将财富的 1-2%用于这类高频交易。因此，对任何人来说，合理的做法就是仅保留 1%、2%或 3%的财富于法币中。
Bitcoin doesn’t make sense as a medium of exchange right now. And maybe never. I tend to think never. It really isn’t a medium of exchange as much as it is just a low frequency settlement network.
比特币目前作为交换媒介并不合理，或许永远都不会。我倾向于认为永远不会。与其说它是交换媒介，不如说它更像是一个低频结算网络。
All the crypto enthusiasts would be better just to accept the success of Bitcoin because it’s the gateway drug for all the alt-asset holders to move into crypto. They really ought to be encouraging the next $3 trillion to come, and the number one way to do that is not to relentlessly, ruthlessly attack and sabotage and undermine Bitcoin, but rather to celebrate its success, because as it gets bigger, the opportunities for other crypto networks to interact with it will also get bigger.
所有加密货币爱好者最好接受比特币的成功，因为它是所有另类资产持有者进入加密领域的入门药引。他们真正应该做的是鼓励接下来的 3 万亿美元流入，而实现这一目标的首要方式不是无情地攻击、破坏和削弱比特币，而是庆祝它的成功，因为随着比特币规模扩大，其他加密网络与之互动的机会也将随之增长。
Chapter 9 | Economics, Inflation, Interest Rates, and Natural Competition
第九章 | 经济学、通货膨胀、利率与自然竞争
Fiat currency is toxic money. It’s just not sound. It’s infected with entropy, and this has all these second-order effects with everything that it touches.
法定货币是有害的金钱。它根本不健全，被熵增所侵蚀，并对接触它的一切产生连锁负面效应。
The destiny of all money is to be encrypted. We can think of encryption itself as a sterilization function or process for money. We’ve actually disinfected the money by encrypting its rules and its supply.
所有货币的宿命终将被加密。我们可以将加密本身视为货币的灭菌功能或过程——通过对其规则和供应量进行加密，我们实际上完成了货币的消毒。
The creation of Bitcoin and the creation of the first effective crypto network is an elemental force that is a true invention akin to the discovery of fire or the discovery of atomic energy.
比特币的诞生与首个有效加密网络的创建，是一种堪比发现火种或原子能的根本性力量，堪称真正的发明。
Most people, they budget for the acquisition [of wealth or assets], and then they underestimate the maintenance because they don’t have the humility or the life experience. This is the problem with building Rube Goldberg devices in the crypto network.
多数人只对财富积累做预算，却因缺乏谦卑或人生阅历而低估维护成本——这正是加密网络中搭建复杂冗余装置的根本问题所在。
The inflation of fiat currency has only one purpose: To reallocate wealth away from some and to others. I don’t know what else you could call it, really, besides theft. And it seems to me like Keynesian economics is an academic cover story.
法定货币的通胀只有一个目的：将财富从一部分人手中重新分配到另一部分人手中。除了称之为盗窃，我实在想不出其他更贴切的形容。在我看来，凯恩斯经济学不过是套学术幌子。
Unless I’m growing my business or my own personal cash flows by more than 10% year over year, then I’m being diluted. I’m losing money. So this is the hurdle rate, basically, to use another investment term.
除非我的业务或个人现金流每年增长超过 10%，否则我就在被稀释——实际上是在亏损。用投资术语来说，这就是基准回报率。
Stoicism is really a philosophy that is very consistent with thermodynamics and entropy and complexity theory.
斯多葛主义本质上是一种与热力学、熵增原理及复杂性理论高度契合的哲学体系。
You could live a great life and you can be a great writer and you can be a great thinker, but at any given point it’s always that last decision that has the potential to define your legacy [as the story of Marcus Aurelius illustrates]. In other words, everyone always has time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
你可以过上精彩的人生，成为伟大的作家或思想家，但在任何时刻，那个最后的决定都有可能定义你的遗产【正如马可·奥勒留的故事所展示的】。换言之，人们总有机会在胜利唾手可得时功亏一篑。
Words don’t matter, actions do. It’s more about what actions you take with skin in the game versus your cognitive beliefs.
言语无关紧要，行动才是一切。关键在于你愿意承担风险付诸实践的行动，而非你头脑中的信念。
Chapter 10 | The Death of Gold
第十章 | 黄金之死
We’re moving from politically engineered money to scientifically engineered money.
我们正从政治设计的货币转向科学设计的货币。
The main problems with gold: (1) It’s mathematically erroneous because the supply isn’t a closed system; it’s subject to disruption. (2) It’s subject to confiscation and the security cost doesn’t scale. (3) It’s too easy to counterfeit and manipulate. (4) It’s too expensive to audit and authenticate. (5) It’s difficult to distribute, or to divide. (6) There is no good application protocol.
黄金的主要问题在于：(1) 数学上存在缺陷，因其供应并非封闭系统，易受干扰；(2) 面临没收风险，且安保成本无法按比例缩减；(3) 极易被伪造和操控；(4) 审计与验证成本过高；(5) 难以分配或分割；(6) 缺乏有效的应用协议。
The gold standard ultimately has always just been an invitation to war. And an invitation to criminality and violence. If the criminals don’t take your gold, then the counterparties take your gold, or your own government takes it, or the hostile government does.
金本位制本质上始终是战争的导火索，也是犯罪与暴力的温床。若非罪犯夺走你的黄金，便是交易对手、本国政府或敌国政府将其掠取。
Chapter 11 | The Failures of Fiat
第十一章 | 法定货币的失败
The fiat standard is appealing because the purchasing power is portable and because it doesn’t invite violence.
法定货币体系之所以具有吸引力，在于其购买力便于携带，且不易引发暴力冲突。
The first problem with fiat is it’s just depleting energy at too rapid a rate. If we just said 10% a year on average, then a system which is losing 10% of its energy every single year or almost 1% a month — it’s kind of a crippling first-order problem on the base-layer. If you’re building on sand, and the sand was sinking 10 feet a year, what structure can you build?
法币的首要问题在于其能量消耗速度过快。假设每年平均贬值 10%，那么这个系统每年损失 10%的能量——相当于每月近 1%的损耗——这在基础层面上是个致命的根本问题。若你在流沙上筑楼，而流沙每年下沉十英尺，你能建起什么结构？
If you flip from proof of work to proof of stake, you destroy your entire mining industry. If you destroy your entire mining industry, all of the security — all the social, political, economic, thermodynamic security — collapses. If it collapses, the integrity and the durability of the money collapses. There are all sorts of second-order, third-order, fourth-order consequences to this.
若从工作量证明转向权益证明，你将摧毁整个挖矿产业。一旦挖矿产业崩溃，所有安全保障——包括社会、政治、经济及热力学层面的安全——都将瓦解。这种崩塌会导致货币的完整性与持久性荡然无存，进而引发连锁的二阶、三阶乃至四阶效应。
If you want to drive people insane, change the rules.
若想逼疯众人，就改变规则。
The human race tried with metal money, and then it went on to fiat money, and then we invented computers, and then we put them on a network, and then we perfected cryptography. So once we checked off the computer box, the network box, and the cryptography box, then you had all the components you needed in order to create a crypto-asset network. And that’s what Bitcoin is.
人类尝试过金属货币，接着转向法定货币，后来发明了计算机，将其联网，又完善了密码学。一旦我们勾选了计算机、网络和密码学这三个选项，就拥有了创建加密资产网络所需的所有组件。比特币正是这样的产物。
Chapter 12 | Why Bitcoin Succeeds
第十二章 | 比特币为何成功
Gold is defective because of its mechanical nature, and fiat is defective because of its political nature.
黄金因其物理属性存在缺陷，法币则因其政治属性而不足。
The Lightning Network is a decentralized, open, proof of stake network. But the critical issue is that it’s a proof of stake network not staked with its own token — it’s staked with the underlying token of Bitcoin, which makes it a much higher integrity, much longer-living, more secure open decentralized network, than one that was created with its own token, which would be self-referential.
闪电网络是一个去中心化、开放的权益证明网络。但关键在于，它并非使用自身代币进行质押，而是以比特币这一底层代币作为质押基础，这使得它比那些使用自创代币（形成自我参照体系）的网络更具完整性、更持久耐用、安全性更高，是一个真正开放的去中心化网络。
The private keys of cryptography are the strongest property rights in the history of the human race. If we think about cryptography as the basis of property rights, then truthfully the only property you can really own is digital property on a secure crypto-asset network, of which the only one we know of is Bitcoin. So right now, the only property you can truly own is Bitcoin.
加密技术中的私钥是人类历史上最强大的财产权形式。若将密码学视为财产权的基础，那么严格来说，你唯一能真正拥有的财产便是安全加密资产网络上的数字财产，而目前我们所知的唯一此类网络就是比特币。因此，当下唯有比特币才是你真正能拥有的财产。
Bitcoin is the hardest to tax, the hardest to destroy, the hardest to seize, and the hardest to impair, of any property available to you to purchase at this point.
在目前可供购买的所有财产中，比特币是最难征税、最难摧毁、最难没收也最难贬损的资产。
Because Bitcoin is impossible to confiscate with force and because it disappears with your death, then any hostile actor always has an incentive to negotiate with you, because it’s better for me to hold a gun to your head and take half of it than pull the trigger and get none of it. That’s not true with any other property……And that confiscation element, it works at the individual level, the institutional level, and the nation-state level.
由于比特币无法通过武力没收且会随持有者死亡而消失，任何敌对势力始终有动机与你协商——毕竟用枪指着你脑袋抢走一半，总比扣动扳机却一无所获要强。这一逻辑适用于其他任何财产……这种防没收特性在个人层面、机构层面乃至国家层面都同样有效。
The great irony: people criticize Bitcoin as being a tool of cyber-hackers, but the ultimate destiny of Bitcoin is to make cyberspace safe for 8 billion people by building it into every cyber-offering and creating skin in the game for every malefactor, with consequences that are not based upon counterparty risk and don’t have to be threaded through nation-states or central banks or credit card companies.
最大的讽刺在于：人们批评比特币是网络黑客的工具，但比特币的终极使命是通过将其融入每一项网络服务，并为每一个作恶者设置利益关联，从而为 80 亿人打造安全的网络空间——其带来的后果不依赖于对手方风险，也无需经由民族国家、中央银行或信用卡公司之手。
Chapter 13 | Bitcoin is Cybernetic Life
第十三章 | 比特币是赛博生命
Bitcoin is dematerializing the accountants, the auditors, the compliance function, the information technology function, the human resources function, the security function, the facilities function, the police force, the military, the function of war, and the function of politics — all of those things are collapsing into the Bitcoin network.
比特币正在使会计师、审计师、合规部门、信息技术部门、人力资源部门、安保部门、设施管理部门、警察部队、军队、战争职能以及政治职能——所有这些都非物质化，它们正被整合进比特币网络中。
The Bitcoin network is self-healing, self-sealing, and self-upgrading, whereas in the fiat banking world it requires human intervention to do all these things.
比特币网络具备自我修复、自我封闭和自我升级的能力，而在法定银行体系中，这些功能都需要人为干预才能实现。
There’s no form of property that respects your wishes after you’re dead—other than Bitcoin. And the significance of that is not you need the money after you’re dead — that’s not the point. The point, which is much deeper than that, is that should you wish for something to carry on—if you want a park watered for 100 years after your death—you have a method to ensure that takes place.
没有任何一种财产形式能在你死后依然尊重你的意愿——除了比特币。其意义不在于你死后还需要钱——重点不在此。更深层次的意义在于，如果你希望某些事情能在你离世后延续——比如想让一座公园在你死后一百年内都得到浇灌——你就有办法确保这一愿望得以实现。
Geo-political disputes will be settled in Bitcoin, but they’re settled without war.
地缘政治争端将以比特币解决，但无需诉诸战争。
All the fiat currencies are national monies. Bitcoin is the first multi-national money.
所有法币都是国家货币，而比特币是首个跨国货币。
Capitalism is a proof-of-work system with a difficulty adjustment.
资本主义是一种带有难度调整的工作量证明体系。
Physical property incentivizes violence, and the game theory dictates a violent resolution. Bitcoin is anti-violence and promotes civility, and that’s what makes it a cleansing technology for the human race.
实体财产会激励暴力行为，博弈论决定了暴力解决方式。比特币则反对暴力，倡导文明，这正是它成为人类净化技术的原因。
Bitcoin is based on capitalism. Capitalism is based on nature.
比特币基于资本主义。资本主义基于自然法则。
Chapter 14 | Bitcoin’s Seven Layers of Security Part 1
第 14 章 | 比特币的七层安全体系（上篇）
The 7 layers of security: an energy layer, a technology layer, a political layer, a financial layer, a network layer, a spatial layer, and a temporal layer of energy.
七层安全防护体系：能源层、技术层、政治层、金融层、网络层、空间层以及时间能量层。
Bitcoin is the most compelling technology for the energy industry that’s come along this decade. Bitcoin mining lets you create an oasis of prosperity around a stranded energy source. If you have stranded raw materials, whatever the energy is, you can drop the miner on top of it and then you can create prosperity, because it’ll monetize any flavor of energy, any frequency of energy, with no bandwidth and minimal infrastructure around it.
比特币是能源行业近十年来最具吸引力的技术。比特币挖矿能让你在闲置能源周围打造繁荣绿洲。无论何种形式的闲置原材料或能源，只要部署矿机就能创造繁荣，因为它能以零带宽和最小基础设施将任何类型的能源、任何频率的能源货币化。
Bitcoin is a chance for energy companies to become technology companies, and it solves so many of their problems.
比特币为能源企业提供了转型科技公司的机遇，并解决了它们诸多难题。
As miners become customers of energy producers everywhere in the world, the energy producers become political allies of Bitcoin.
随着全球各地的矿工成为能源生产商的客户，能源生产商也变成了比特币的政治盟友。
Bitcoin miners are knocking on doors everywhere in the universe and they’re looking for supportive political jurisdictions. The mining network actually becomes a political lobbying network for Bitcoin. And then every politician that has a Bitcoin mine has tax revenue.
比特币矿工们正叩响宇宙各处的大门，寻找支持性的政治管辖区。挖矿网络实际上演变成了比特币的政治游说网络。而每位拥有比特币矿场的政客都能获得税收收入。
Chapter 15 | Bitcoin’s Seven Layers of Security Part 2
第十五章 | 比特币的七层安全体系（下篇）
Bitcoin is capital itself, but it also attracts other kinds: dollar capital, semi-conductor capital, political capital, energy capital, human capital — all these forms of capital are creating a genetic diversity and a Darwinian vitality for the network.
比特币本身就是资本，但它还吸引了其他形式的资本：美元资本、半导体资本、政治资本、能源资本、人力资本——所有这些资本形式共同为网络创造了基因多样性，赋予了其达尔文式的生命力。
When you have 50 well-capitalized Bitcoin miners and they’ve got billions of dollars each at stake, and they’re spread across all the countries in the world, then they are in essence the first line of defense for Bitcoin. You can call them different things — I refer to them as a motor of sovereignty. They’re running the motor that keeps the sovereign network fresh, and they’re providing the transactions and the security.
当全球分布着 50 家资金雄厚的比特币矿工，每家都押注数十亿美元时，他们实质上构成了比特币的第一道防线。你可以用不同称谓形容他们——我称之为主权引擎。他们运转着保持主权网络活力的引擎，提供交易处理与安全保障。
By staying decentralized geographically and politically, the Bitcoin network becomes immune to a cyber-attack, it becomes immune to a physical attack, and it becomes immune to a political attack. And it even becomes somewhat immune to a protocol attack where someone tries to get people to change the protocol.
通过在地理和政治上保持去中心化，比特币网络能够免疫网络攻击、物理攻击和政治攻击。它甚至能在一定程度上抵御协议层面的攻击，比如有人试图诱导人们修改协议规则。
It was a mistake to try to change the block size. It’s a mistake to try to change the frequency. Why? Because when you create a crypto-universe or a crypto-creature, the block size and the frequency of the network are akin to the space-time constants of the universe. It’s like trying to change the gravitational constant and the speed of light. You don’t get to play God except once.
试图改变区块大小是个错误，调整出块频率同样错误。为何？因为当你创造一个加密宇宙或加密生物时，区块大小和网络频率就如同宇宙的时空常数。这就像试图改变引力常数和光速——除了创世那一刻，你无权扮演上帝。
There are no successful examples of a proof of stake network succeeding as digital property.
没有成功的例子证明权益证明网络能作为数字财产取得成功。
Chapter 16 | Bitcoin Economics and Evolution
第十六章 | 比特币经济学与演进
Over the past 10 years the mining network has gone from being energy-intensive to being technology-intensive. There was a time when 90% of the country was farmers and now just 1–2% of the people in the country produce all the food, because it’s become technology-intensive. The Bitcoin network is similar, except substitute energy for labor and technology for capital.
过去十年间，挖矿网络已从能源密集型转向技术密集型。曾几何时，全国 90%的人口是农民，如今仅需 1%-2%的人就能生产全部粮食，这正是技术密集化的结果。比特币网络亦如此，只不过将劳动力替换为能源，资本转化为技术。
We’re in a gold rush right now. Or a Bitcoin rush. In 2035 we’ll have mined 99% of the Bitcoin, so you’ve got [approximately] 14 years, during which the block rewards are pretty high relatively speaking. So it’s very lucrative to be in the business, but it is going to become less profitable, likely. At the very least we know it’s going to rotate into a transaction-fee business.
我们正身处一场淘金热——或者说比特币淘金热。到 2035 年，99%的比特币将被挖出，因此你还有[大约]14 年时间，在此期间区块奖励相对较高。虽然目前这个行业利润丰厚，但未来盈利能力很可能会下降。至少我们可以确定，它将逐渐转向以交易手续费为主的商业模式。
Yes, miners should keep Bitcoin. But it’s also true that non-miners should keep Bitcoin. If you believe in Bitcoin, then the logic follows that no matter business you’re in, if you have operating income, you should invest in Bitcoin. And if you are able to generate financing, if you can raise debt or equity then you should also raise debt and invest that in Bitcoin.
是的，矿工应当持有比特币。但非矿工同样应该持有比特币。如果你相信比特币的价值逻辑，那么无论从事何种行业，只要你有运营收入，就应当投资比特币。若能获得融资渠道——无论是债权还是股权融资——你都应该举债并将资金投入比特币。
Some proof of stakers intentionally misunderstand proof of work and assume that energy consumption is linear, and then they can play the ESG card and virtue-signal and pretend that they’re doing something good for the environment.
某些权益证明的支持者故意曲解工作量证明，假设能源消耗是线性增长的，然后他们就能打出环境、社会和治理（ESG）牌，假装自己在为环保做好事，实则只是虚伪作态。
The simple design idea of the Lightning Network is this: I create a channel with a million times less Bitcoin in it, and I move it a million times faster. And that works fine for small transactions. Once you get that idea, you realize that a layer 2 solution (Lightning) is a lot better idea than a higher performance layer 1 solution.
闪电网络的简单设计理念是这样的：我创建一个通道，里面存放的比特币数量少一百万倍，但传输速度快一百万倍。这对于小额交易来说完全可行。一旦理解了这个概念，你就会意识到第二层解决方案（闪电网络）比追求更高性能的第一层解决方案要明智得多。
There are lots of opportunities for financial applications and innovations in the layer 2 and layer 3 space, all built upon the Bitcoin layer.
在基于比特币基础层构建的第二层和第三层领域，存在着大量金融应用和创新的机会。
Chapter 17 | How Bitcoin Changes Everything
第十七章 | 比特币如何改变一切
Mobile payments, retail banks, commercial banks, exchanges, corporate finance: all applications of Bitcoin ultimately scale the network, even when the purists dislike the vehicles.
移动支付、零售银行、商业银行、交易所、企业金融——比特币的所有应用终将扩展其网络规模，即便纯粹主义者不认可某些实现方式。
As Bitcoin spreads on the balance sheets of different companies and different governments, it spreads onto different platforms and it morphs into different derivatives and different flavors.
随着比特币在不同公司和政府的资产负债表上扩散，它也蔓延到不同的平台，并演变成各种衍生品和变体。
Currency is an application of money. Money is the base layer, the end-all, be-all source of all value and virtue. And everything else is an application on top of it. I don’t need 100% of everything I am to be in my currency. I only need 1% of everything I own to be in the currency, and then 99% of what I am I need to be in the money. And in fact, if the money has integrity, the currency doesn’t need to. Which is a pretty important point. If I had 99% of my wealth in the money and if the economy was growing or my assets are growing at 4% a year and if 1% was in the currency and the currency was devaluing at 10% per year, it wouldn’t matter because it’s on the margin. I’m getting wealthier faster than I’m dissipating energy.
货币是金钱的一种应用形式。金钱是基础层，是一切价值和美德的终极源泉。其他一切都构建在其之上。我不需要将我所有的 100%都投入货币中。我只需要将我所拥有的 1%置于货币中，而剩下的 99%则需要保留在金钱里。事实上，如果金钱本身具有诚信，货币则无需如此。这一点至关重要。假设我将 99%的财富保留在金钱中，而经济或我的资产每年增长 4%，同时 1%的财富以货币形式持有，而货币每年贬值 10%，这并不重要，因为这只是边际效应。我的财富增长速度超过了能量的消耗速度。
There’s a first mover advantage for entities that embrace and integrate Bitcoin applications—cities, states, banks, corporations, energy companies, etc.
对于率先接纳并整合比特币应用的城市、州、银行、企业、能源公司等实体而言，存在着先发优势。
New products are coming that will allow investors to put in their parameters and back into the right blend customized for them, using Bitcoin to augment their risk profile.
即将推出的新产品将允许投资者输入自身参数，通过比特币优化风险配置，自动生成适合他们的定制化投资组合。
Bitcoin can be used to start trusts and endowments.
比特币可用于设立信托基金和捐赠基金。
There are a lot of hardware applications in Bitcoin. There are the miners, nodes, wallets. Any device that exists could have Bitcoin protocol built into it.
比特币领域存在大量硬件应用，包括矿机、节点设备、钱包等。任何现有设备都可内置比特币协议。
Social media companies could use Bitcoin for authentication and verification on their platforms. Requiring users to have skin in the game eliminates the vast majority of bots, scams, and trolls—because it becomes too costly for them.
社交媒体公司可以利用比特币进行平台身份认证。要求用户付出实际成本能有效清除绝大多数机器人账号、诈骗行为和网络喷子——因为对他们而言操作成本变得过高。
It’s worse than spam. There are hostile, malicious actors that are fake bots that are waging a psychological psyops warfare to destroy people and ideas and demoralize them. And they do it for economic reasons, political reasons, etc. And there is no way to stop that in the absence of some kind of value network. So the killer app for Bitcoin with social networks is credit-worthiness leading to cyber-security. Safety and civility in cyberspace. It’s lightning-fast and dirt-cheap so it’s open to everybody, and it works across every social network: it cleans up all of the feeds, the news feeds, etc. It also works for all the communication networks: WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, Zoom, Gmail, every other mail, Office365, etc.
这比垃圾邮件更恶劣。存在大量恶意虚假机器人账号，它们发动心理战来摧毁个体与思想，瓦解人们斗志。这些行为背后是经济或政治动机。在没有价值网络约束的情况下，这种现象无法遏制。比特币在社交网络中的杀手级应用就是通过信用价值实现网络安全——为网络空间带来安全与文明。闪电网络极速且成本低廉，人人可用，并能跨平台净化所有信息流：包括新闻推送等各类内容。该方案同样适用于所有通讯网络：WhatsApp、Signal、iMessage、Zoom、Gmail 等邮件系统，以及 Office365 等办公套件。
Bitcoin is a killer app for the general payments and remittance networks (where Visa and Mastercard charge 2.5%). If you want to plug 100,000 businesses into each other and move blocks of money a million to $100 million or $1 billion at a time, you do it on the Bitcoin network.
比特币是通用支付和汇款网络的杀手级应用（Visa 和万事达卡收取 2.5%手续费）。如果你想将 10 万家企业相互连接，并一次性转移 100 万至 1 亿或 10 亿美元的资金块，你可以在比特币网络上实现。
