????對于Lite幣的成功，除了自己的誠實，李還歸功于另外幾個要素。首先，因為Lite幣采用了不同于比特幣的基礎代碼來保護交易記錄。因此，它就不用在與比特幣一樣的處理器上挖掘。這種差異就讓挖幣者能在貨幣爭搶相對緩和的時期在比特幣與Lite幣之間來回運作，從而可以平抑市場波動，降低損失。采用Lite幣還有一大好處，因為它比比特幣略有改進——它的交易確認要比比特幣快12倍，這也是它得名的由來。

????安托諾坡羅斯認為，除了有效創新和誠實的開發者以外，評估某種數字加密貨幣長期存活能力最重要的方式就是看它是否能被商家接受，成為購買真實商品的貨幣。這將是個很高的門檻——Lite幣是唯一被少量商家接受的替代幣，而就算比特幣的擁躉，只要有新的商家接受它，都會被吹為又登上了一座分水嶺。不過開發者和替代幣社群目前也開始把商家接受度作為與技術同等重要的要務了：據發言人克里斯?埃利斯稱，羽翼豐滿的Feather幣現在已組建了一個致力于開發商家關系的團隊。

????而從邏輯上說，社群接受則是數字加密貨幣的實際用途和價值的根本推動力，因為所有貨幣最終都必須建立在集體信任的基礎上才能流通。目前要讓絕大多數人相信數字加密貨幣和政府印發的貨幣同樣可信還有很大難度，但埃利斯對我說了一句我聽過最簡潔也最有說服力的話：“實際上，貨幣只是一筆分類賬。它是記錄社會上所有經濟活動的一種手段。”

????替代幣不僅僅是黑客的試驗和求財的貪婪，它的爆發是受到這樣一種信念的驅使，即數字加密貨幣代表了一種全新的、更便宜也更好的保留經濟分類賬的手段。數字加密幣的擁躉，包括替代幣的創造者在內，他們都相信數字加密貨幣將掀起劃時代的變革，擺脫如今金融系統控制者的束縛。埃利斯說：“銀行搞的是收過路費式的經濟。它們的信用卡要收10%的手續費。”而在數字加密貨幣的流通效率下，這個成本幾乎可以忽略不計。埃利斯稱，Alt幣表明“那些擁有足夠意志力、全身心投入、花大量時間培育虛擬貨幣社區的人”現在已經能賺到錢了。

????這句話是否會應驗還有待觀察，與此同時，替代幣還將迎來十分坎坷的發展歷程。安托諾坡羅斯說：“它們中有99%都會在創造性毀滅的過程中灰飛煙滅。不過這樣也好，因為每隔一段時間，就會有更獨特、更吸引眼球的新生事物嶄露頭角。”（財富中文網）

????譯者：清遠???

????Lee credits several factors besides his own honesty with the success of litecoin. First, because litecoin uses a different base code from bitcoin to secure its transaction records, it has not been mined on the same processors as bitcoin. This separation keeps miners from switching back and forth between bitcoin and litecoin during periods of low competition for coins, reducing volatility and vulnerability. Litecoin's adoption has also been helped because it represents a small improvement over bitcoin – litecoin's transaction confirmation is 12 times faster than bitcoin's. Hence the name.

????In addition to useful innovations and honest developers, Andreas M. Antonopoulos says that the most important way to evaluate the long-term viability of a cryptocurrency is its acceptance by merchants as payment for real goods. That remains a high bar – litecoin is the only altcoin with so much as a handful of merchant adopters, and even bitcoin advocates still trumpet every new merchant acceptance as a watershed. But developers and communities are beginning to make adoption a priority alongside technology: the fledgling feathercoin, according to spokesman Chris Ellis, has an entire team devoted to merchant relations.

????Community acceptance is, logically, the fundamental driver of cryptocurrency utility and value, since all currency ultimately operates on a basis of collective trust. It remains challenging to persuade most people that cryptocurrency can be as trustworthy as a printed government guarantee, but Ellis gave me perhaps the most concise and convincing version of that pitch I've heard. "It turns out, money is just a ledger. It's a way of recording all the economic activity in a society."

????Above and beyond all the hacker experimentation and raw avarice, the altcoin explosion is driven by a belief that the cryptocurrency model represents a radically new, cheaper, and better way to keep that ledger. Cryptocoin advocates, including altcoin founders, believe that cryptocurrency will trigger an epochal power shift away from the controllers of today's financial system. "Banks are operating a tollbooth economy," said Ellis. "Banks want 10% of revenue for credit cards," a cost that cryptocurrency's distributed efficiency slashes to nearly nothing. Altcoins, Ellis said, demonstrate that "anyone with sufficient will and devotion and time to nurture the community" can now build their own money.

????That remains to be seen, and in the meantime, altcoins are in for a very bumpy ride. "99% of them will expire in the process of creative destruction," says Antonopoulos. "And that's fine, because every once in a while, something unique and amazing will pop out."?