深度分析：比特幣在2018年還能漲多少？
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如果杰瑞·布里托（Jerry Brito）的女兒再晚一點出生的話，等待她的可能便是一個完全不同的名字。11月，布里托在醫院徘徊了23個小時，在生產室外等待妻子生產，他隨口為女兒取了另外一個名字：“1萬”。 數年以來，非營利性組織Coin Center創始執行董事布里托一直都致力于宣傳比特幣，他認為加密貨幣及其背后的技術將大幅改變我們的經濟，重塑這個人們出生的世界。如今，布里托兩個期盼已久的夢想即將實現。妻子剛過感恩節不久便走進了產房，而比特幣也開始了其騰飛之旅。比特幣價格在年初的時候是950美元，然后在布里托于婦產醫院等待的這段時間內突破了9000美元大關。這也解釋了為什么他的女兒在出生時會如此耐心，他說道：“我女兒要等到比特幣突破1萬美元之后才愿意降生到這個世上。” 不過，布里托的女兒出生于11月27日，還是早了些，當時比特幣價格還只有9600美元，因此布里托夫婦為女兒取了另一個名字。然而，比特幣在第二天晚上便突破了10000美元。就在這位小姑娘出生后10天，比特幣的價格再次翻了一番，達到了2萬美元。總的來說，比特幣自2017年初以來上漲了約20倍，讓幾乎所有的傳統投資都黯然失色。 對于比特幣的擁躉來說，價格的飆升是對其根深蒂固信仰的報答。布里托說：“在我看來，這項科技明顯與以前和現在的互聯網一樣，具有深遠的影響力。”但是比特幣的飆升還指明了這場革命的未來方向。關注短期利益的投資者害怕錯過這一千載難逢的機遇，義無反顧地投資比特幣，引發了比特幣的狂熱。唯一獲授權的美國比特幣經紀交易商Genesis Trading的董事總經理馬丁·加西亞（Martin Garcia）說：“如果比特幣成功了，我曾有過的機遇不會落到我兒子頭上，必然也就輪不到我的孫子。”“一旦成功之后，它將成為一種無聊的投資——也就是全球資金流通的一種方式。”然而，這種無聊的投資無法讓你的投資在一年之內飆升1800%。 回歸主流 比特幣此前也曾出現過熱潮。在2013年，其價格翻了85倍；第二年便出現了崩盤，原因是Mt. Gox交易所遭到了黑客攻擊，動搖了眾多早期投資者的信心。直到2017年，比特幣才迎來了拐點，進入了主流投資客的視野。截止到11月，美國最大的比特幣交易所Coinbase簽約了1200萬名用戶，超過了擁有46年歷史的經紀商Charles Schwab的客戶數量。在幾周的時間里，Coinbase應用成為了iPhone下載量最大的應用。在截稿之時，比特幣的市值達到了約3000億美元，然而它曾經只不過是離經叛道者的幻想罷了。 Digital Currency Group業務開發總監梅爾特姆·德米羅斯（Meltem Demirors）表示，“我們正在經歷本世紀最大的財富創造機遇，而且人們希望從中分一杯羹。”DCG負責監管加密貨幣資產組合，其中包括1%的比特幣總供應量。它還投資了從事區塊鏈工作的初創企業。區塊鏈是一種會計工具，它使用計算機網絡來共同維持相互信任、分享的交易分賬戶，無需依靠任何外部機構作為中介。 地緣政治的動蕩提升了這一技術的吸引力。自2009年面世以來，比特幣便一直受益于金融危機引發的各大機構之間的極度不信任。而且隨著民粹主義情緒在西方的蔓延，人們也開始呼吁設立一種能夠擺脫政府和銀行控制的分散式貨幣體系。比特幣的價格在2016年英國脫歐公投之后出現了飛躍，然后在唐納德·特朗普入主白宮之后再次大幅上漲。鑒于價格的急劇攀升，再加上勒索軟件對支付比特幣的要求以及委內瑞拉等國的買家尋求躲避超級通脹，比特幣的重要性比以往任何時候都更加深入人心。 風投資本公司Placeholder聯合創始人、新比特幣投資者指南《Cryptoassets》合著者克里斯·彭尼斯克（Chris Burniske）說：“確實有人將其作為一種防災避害的手段，就像人們購買黃金一樣。”億萬富翁、前對沖基金經理邁克·諾瓦格拉茨（Mike Novogratz）亦同意這一觀點：比特幣熱背后有“太多的彈藥”作為支撐。他目前在比特幣和其他加密貨幣中的投資占其凈財富的30%。每一個體制的失敗都再次肯定了這一觀點；在富國銀行虛假賬戶丑聞這類的事件得以曝光之后，他問道，“我憑什么還去相信那些該死的銀行？” 信任與否，銀行和資產管理商也都蓄勢待發，進軍比特幣市場。Gemini首席執行官兼聯合創始人泰勒·溫科勒弗斯指出，“華爾街剛開始小心翼翼地接觸這一市場。” 12月，Gemini旗下加密貨幣交易所在比特幣期貨合約領域選擇了一個較為傳統的合作伙伴——CBOE，為機構投資巨頭提供了一個參與這一市場的機會。“目前比特幣的第一輪熱潮已經結束。” 在懷疑論者看來，這一對比特幣趨之若鶩的情景并不陌生，只不過是新瓶裝舊酒罷了，同時也摻雜了狂熱的暴富心理，其悲慘的結局已是隱約可見。諾貝爾獎得主經濟學家羅伯特·施樂（Robert Shiller）（他專門就這一主題撰寫了一本書）警告說：“這基本上就是互聯網泡沫或房市泡沫的再現。”（施樂曾預見了互聯網和房市泡沫的破滅，他對《財富》說，他正在醞釀出版第四版《非理性繁榮》（ Irrational Exuberance），并在其中收錄加密貨幣狂熱。） 然而，樂觀主義者蜂擁而至的現象目前依然在持續，人們對經濟學家的警告和可能的災難也是嗤之以鼻。隨著大街上和華爾街的投資者們涌入比特幣市場，人們不禁要問：比特幣的繁榮會不會只是一個轉瞬即逝的美夢呢？ 比特幣飆升的原因 2010年8月，距離比特幣標志性的白皮書發布后不到兩年，中本聰（該項目未經確認的匿名創造者或多名創造者）提出了一個思想實驗。創建人在比特幣在線論壇上的一個討論話題中說，“假設有這樣一種基礎金屬，和黃金一樣稀缺。” 中本聰寫道，這種假想的金屬沒有“任何實際或裝飾用途。” ，但卻擁有“一個特殊、神奇的屬性：可以通過傳播渠道進行流通。” 當時，中本聰描述了比特幣的實體模型，而且他的觀點是解決貨幣的根本悖論：當貨幣的價值完全取決于其交換中介的功能時，那么作為交換中介，貨幣本身如何定價？答案很簡單：定價基本上是主觀的。或許有限的供應和可以隨身攜帶的特性足以賦予中本聰這一神奇的貨幣市場價值。或許“預見其潛在交換用途”的投機者會押注比特幣。這位哲學家開玩笑說，“當然，我也想要一些比特幣。” 事實證明，投資者也想要分一杯羹，不過比特幣的用途基本上仍停留在理論層面。雖然一些擁躉們曾夢想比特幣成為全球首個通用貨幣，從而代替央行，并取代Visa和萬事達卡，但到目前為止，其計算機化的字節最多相當于“數字黃金”。風投公司Sequoia合伙人馬特·黃（Matt Huang）表示，它是存放資金（也就是經濟學家所說的價值貯藏）的好去處，但對于支付來說還不現實。“用比特幣購買咖啡或比薩這一流行的說法在目前來講就是一個白日夢。” Coinbase前總裁弗萊德·額薩姆（Fred Ehrsam）注意到這一“神奇的互聯網貨幣”在實際中的不同尋常之處。“比特幣的價值來自于其他人賦予它的價值。細想之下這是一件很奇怪的事情。”雖然奇怪，但卻并非是沒有先例：就像我們的經濟所打造的綠皮書一樣，以及先于比特幣存在的黃金白銀。比特幣之所以有價值，是因為人們的共同決定所造成的。馬特還指出，“如果認同比特幣有價值的人足夠多，那么這個泡沫便可以持續下去。” 為了證明比特幣價格的上漲并非是空穴來風，像溫克萊沃斯（Winklevoss）兄弟這樣的投機商則引用了梅特卡夫法則。該法則稱，網絡的價值會因為每個額外參與者的參加而大幅提升。泰勒與其兄弟卡梅隆曾起訴哈佛大學校友、Facebook首席執行官扎克伯格偷竊其業務方案，并因此而進入了全美人民的視野。他們在比特幣中找到了有利可圖的第二個機會。數年前，他們把從Facebook和解得來的6500萬美元投入了比特幣，據說他們目前已經成為了億萬富翁。泰勒說：“從很多層面上來講，金錢是最終的社交網絡，它是連接著所有人的價值媒介。” 比特幣所享有的品牌知名度并不比快速擴張的前輩差，例如搜索領域的谷歌、社交網絡領域的Facebook和電子商業領域的亞馬遜。耶魯大學經濟學家施樂說：“比特幣比其他任何虛擬貨幣都更有號召力，因為它是第一個吃螃蟹的人。就像哈佛大學被認為是最知名的大學一樣，因為它是美國的第一所大學。” 比特幣的薪酬待遇很獨特，它會為利用計算機支持其網絡（同時讓比特幣更有價值）的挖礦者提供回報。生產商為滿足需求加大供應量，會在無意之間造成供應過剩，這時，像玉米、原油或黃金這類商品的價格通常會下跌。相比之下，比特幣的供應量按照計算機代碼來看永遠是固定的，共2100萬個（其中已生產了約80%）。稀缺性無疑是價格最有力的推手。 在一些支持者的眼中，這些優勢就基本上變成了毫無約束的積極面。網絡安全先驅John McAfee最近為比特幣設置了一個100萬美元的獎金目標（最初為50萬美元）。其他人說，比特幣的市值可能會逼近黃金——目前為9.7萬億美元——大約相當于46萬美元/比特幣。 然而，即便是比特幣最忠誠的擁躉也承認，如果中國或美國的監管方最終決定取締比特幣，或出現了更好、功能更加豐富的區塊鏈，那么加密貨幣的價值也有可能一落千丈。此前也有不少前車之鑒。康奈爾大學法學教授羅伯特·赫克特（Robert Hockett）說：“在我看來，比特幣就像是高科技豆豆娃或21世紀的郁金香。”他曾在金融危機之后建議城市使用土地征用權購買不良抵押資產，并因此而聲名狼藉。在證券監管商警告人們不要用抵押貸款來進行比特幣投機之后，他諷刺地說道，“就像是小丑使出了洪荒之力來逗樂一樣。” 赫克特認為，區塊鏈技術將成為游戲顛覆者。但是他不理解市場對于比特幣的這種癡迷，尤其是比特幣還存在不少缺陷。作為最先面世的加密貨幣，比特幣仍受制于第一代技術的一些常見缺點。交易缺乏隱私性，而且費用通常高達20美元，哪怕是小額交易亦是如此。黑客十分猖獗。而且整個網絡目前每秒最多只能處理7筆交易，而Visa和萬事達在同樣的時間里可以處理數千個交易。赫克特說：“就有點像上個世紀90年代仍押注Betamax（索尼的視頻錄影帶技術——譯者注）一樣，當時，其他的新視頻技術已經面世。” 金融分析公司Meraglim首席策略師吉姆·里卡茲（Jim Rickards）對于比特幣也有著同樣悲觀的看法。他說，“我對區塊鏈的未來充滿了信心，但是我把比特幣看作是穴居人，它已經進入了進化的死胡同。” 瀕危物種？ 當英國科學家在18世紀首次看到鴨嘴獸時，他們認為這是一個騙局。這種動物并不符合其傳統的生物分類范疇。它看起來像是鼴鼠，但長著鴨子的喙、海貍的尾巴和水獺的腳。此外，它還能分泌毒液并產卵。然而，致力于投資加密貨幣和相關技術的風投資本公司Blockchain Capital研究負責人斯賓塞·博加特（Spencer Bogart）說：“在經過非常認真的研究之后，他們說‘這是真的！’” 博加特引用了他最喜歡的一個類比：“鴨嘴獸沒有爬行動物、海貍、鴨子或水獺的特長，但是它非常適合做鴨嘴獸。比特幣并不具有貨幣、商品或金融技術公司的諸多優點，但它非常適合做比特幣。它正在創建自有的門類和資產類別。” 當懷疑論者棄比特幣于不顧時，像博加特這樣的多頭投資者給予了反擊。比特幣不同于黃金，它不是靜止的。軟件代碼一直在不斷地發展。其特征可以得到調整、改進，并以分叉的形式形成新的迭代，后者有潛力以難以想象的方式釋放價值。例如，很多比特幣的粉絲都對“Lightning Network”抱有很高的期望，后者是一項旨在加快支付速度的改進。如果比特幣在進化的過程中吸收了更具吸引力的設施，例如讓跨境支付變得便宜快捷，或實現帶有業務關系加密、自動付款功能的智能合約，那些持有這一有限貨幣的投資者將能夠找到其他潛在用戶，甚至那些財大氣粗的公司，都可能會叫嚷著購買比特幣。 對于很多人來說，這個原因足以讓他們長線持有比特幣。大多數早期投資者都是這樣做的。那些至少持有比特幣長達三年的人，又稱HODLers（這個名稱源于在線論壇對“hold”的錯誤拼寫），基本上仍持有比特幣。數字統計公司Chainalysis向《財富》雜志提供的研究顯示，這些人的比特幣僅占2017年進入加密貨幣交易所比特幣總量的4%。鑒于比特幣流入交易所基本上也就意味著有意銷售比特幣，這一點說明，大多數人都會將意外之財儲藏起來。 當然，人們有很多原因對比特幣采取觀望的態度，包括其價值在明天可能翻番的事實，以及目前基本上沒有什么非投機方式來花費或使用它。例如，財富管理公司富達允許雇員使用比特幣在公司食堂來購買午餐，但到目前為止，這個項目一直都是個擺設。畢竟，今天花5美元比特幣購買三明治可能到了下個圣誕節就像花100美元購買一樣。世事難料。 這里存在一個問題：如果加密貨幣因波動性過大而難以用于支付，那么它無法成為一種有用的貨幣。另一方面，如果它某一天穩定下來，并成為了廣泛使用的對象，其價格在飆升后將一路平坦，而且它將成為經紀商Martin Garcia所害怕的“無聊投資”。無論是哪一種結果（比特幣是否能夠充當貨幣），都將讓投機資本撤離比特幣，并導致慘痛的崩盤。與此同時，即便是HODLers在這一貨幣得到廣泛使用之前一直會守著比特幣不放，但是他們到底愿意等多久？諾瓦格拉茨說，“如果3年變成了10年，市場也將崩潰。”在任何一種情況下，鑒于比特幣分散式的特性，監管方（或任何人）沒有多少可供使用的杠桿，來為比特幣的內部破裂設定一個下限。 然而，大玩家們則認為這些風險都是值得去冒的。泡沫通常會在傻瓜資金追逐精明資本時破滅，但到目前為止，比特幣飆升基本上源于散戶和小型投資者。雖然人們可以在加密貨幣交易所以增量的形式購買一部分比特幣（低至1美元），但機構投資者因資產監管方面的信托和合規要求，基本上已被禁止參加這些交易。 如今這一現象正在發生變化。像Coinbase和BitGo這樣的公司將推出針對重量級投資者的產品，甚至連最沉穩的對沖基金和主權財富管理商都沉不住氣了。據悉，高盛正在考慮推出比特幣交易業務。（該銀行到目前為止唯一與加密貨幣相關的投資是一家名為Circle的初創企業，后者已在經營交易柜臺。）多頭投資者稱，精明資本的流入可能會使當前比特幣中的所有財富黯然失色。理論上，它可以在霎那之間讓比特幣的市值增幅超過100%。 比特幣在回歸其正常價值之前會大幅上揚的另一個理由在于：在歷史上，一些最空洞的泡沫相對來說有其局限性：17世紀的郁金香泡沫并沒有對荷蘭以外的地區帶來多大的附帶損失；互聯網的興起推動了硅谷的崛起，但是國際股市回彈的速度相對更快。然而在眼下，全球任何人都可以購買比特幣，包括那些沒有銀行賬戶、從未接觸資本市場的人群，從阿富汗一直到津巴布韋。諾瓦格拉茨還表示，“事實上，這是首個全球性的狂熱，它將讓比特幣成為我們這個時代最具投機性的泡沫。” 何去何從 諾瓦格拉茨指出，鑒于這些林林總總的原因，“加密貨幣這個泡沫即使達10萬億也算不上瘋狂，而這將超過目前市值的20倍。”他還表示，作為對比，在不計算通脹的情況下，納斯達克股市市值在互聯網泡沫破滅之前達到了6萬億美元。 當然，在互聯網泡沫破滅之前和之后，納斯達克擁有微軟、英特爾和其他眾多知名的商業巨頭。如今，比特幣仍是一個沒有實際價值的鴨嘴獸。即便是Coinbase首席執行官，比特幣熱的最大受益者，也對此充滿了疑問。布萊恩·阿姆斯通（Brian Armstrong）在最近的全體大會之后向《財富》雜志透露，“我們可能進入了泡沫期”。目前所有加密貨幣的總市值已遠超5000億美元，但人們鮮有機會在實際中使用這些貨幣。阿姆斯通擔心，“我們自身的價值還達不到0.5萬億美元。”不管怎么樣，在他看來，比特幣價格的每一次大漲，其市值就會更上一層樓——即便暴跌之后亦是如此。 多頭投資商表示，比特幣的價格超過其自身價值越多，比特幣技術追趕市場期許的動力就越大。Digital Currency Group的德米諾斯（Demirors）說：“目前的這種金融投機趨勢……對于基礎設施的發展來說異常重要。”比特幣的狂熱激勵著編程人員和商業人士將時間和精力投入比特幣相關的項目中。具有遠見卓識的狂熱分子們正在將新得到財富大量投入到加密貨幣經濟中，打造以區塊鏈為導向的業務，例如溫克勒弗斯兄弟的Gemini，或創建加密貨幣專屬的對沖基金，例如納韋爾·拉維肯特（Naval Ravikant）創建的AngelList。要賺錢的話必需得先花錢。 再者，流入比特幣的財富越多，那么其維護者在更新相關技術時就會越發保守。這也將為其他加密貨幣趕超其前任創造機會。加密貨幣對沖基金Polychain Capital歐拉夫·卡爾森-維（Olaf Carlson-Wee）說：“從長期來看，我認為比特幣的市場份額是下行的，因為行業中有趣的技術層出不窮。”他還表示，“作為一條經驗法則，我從來沒有看空過加密貨幣。” 對于Coin Center的杰瑞·布里托（Jerry Brito）來說，比特幣的未來并不僅僅在于其提供無限匯報的潛力，同時還因為他看到了希望——自己的女兒將在一個更美好的世界中茁壯成長。他說，“在這個世界中，人們可以保證資金的安全……能夠與世界任何人進行交易。”從這一點來看，比特幣的誘惑力并非是金錢本身，而是技術。或許這是為什么布里托夫婦最終在為他女兒取名時并沒有將金錢因素納入考慮范圍的原因。他們為女兒取名佩妮（Penny），但它是佩內洛普（Penelope）的昵稱（并非是“美分”的意思——譯者注）。 （財富中文網） 本文將出現在2018年1月1日期《財富》雜志上，標題名為《比特幣是否還會升升不息？》 譯者：馮豐 審稿：夏林 |
Had Jerry Brito’s daughter waited longer to emerge, she might have been someone else entirely. In November, as Brito paced the hospital for 23 hours while his wife was in the delivery room, he floated an alternative name for the baby: “Ten Thousand.” The founding executive director of the nonprofit Coin Center, Brito had spent years advocating for Bitcoin, arguing that the cryptocurrency, and the technology underpinning it, would dramatically change our economy, reshaping the world into which we’re all born. Now Brito was on the cusp of realizing two long-held dreams. Even as his wife went into labor a few days after Thanksgiving, Bitcoin was taking off as well. Worth $950 at the start of the year, its price breached $9,000 while Brito waited in the maternity ward. This explained why his daughter was taking her time, he began saying: “This baby does not want to be born in a world where Bitcoin is not $10,000.” Alas, the price was only $9,600 when Brito’s daughter arrived early Nov. 27; the parents went with a different name. But Bitcoin broke $10,000 the following night. And in the newborn’s first 10 days on earth, it more than doubled again, grazing $20,000. In all, Bitcoin has seen a roughly 20-fold rise since the beginning of 2017, outshining virtually every conventional investment. For true believers, the soaring rise rewarded a deep-seated faith. “It’s always been kind of obvious to me that this technology is as profoundly revolutionary as the Internet was and is,” Brito says. But Bitcoin’s spike also represented the revolution’s next phase. Less prescient investors, fearing they’d miss the opportunity of a lifetime, had jumped into the currency, spurring a frenzy. “If Bitcoin is successful, the opportunity I have, my son will not have, and definitively, my son’s son will not have,” says Martin Garcia, managing director at Genesis Trading, the only licensed U.S. broker-dealer for Bitcoin. “Once it’s successful, it’s a boring investment—it’s a way to move money around the world.” And “boring” doesn’t earn you 1,800% in a year. Going Mainstream Bitcoin has provoked hysteria before. Over one stretch of 2013, its price surged 85-fold; it crashed the following year after a hack of the exchange Mt. Gox shook the confidence of many early devotees. It wasn’t until 2017, though, that Bitcoin hit a tipping point of mainstream popularity. By November, one of the biggest U.S. Bitcoin exchanges, Coinbase, had signed up some 12 million customers, surpassing the number of accounts at 46-year-old brokerage Charles Schwab . Within weeks, Coinbase’s app became the iPhone’s most downloaded. At press time, Bitcoin, once largely an insurgent’s fantasy, was worth some $300 billion in real money. “We are going through the biggest wealth generation opportunity of the century, and people want to participate,” says Meltem Demirors, director of development at Digital Currency Group. DCG oversees a cryptocurrency portfolio including 1% of the total Bitcoin supply. It also invests in startups working on blockchains, accounting tools that use networks of computers to collectively sustain mutually trusted, shared ledgers of transactions, without relying on any outside institutions as middlemen. The appeal of this tech is stoked by geopolitical unease. Since its inception in 2009, Bitcoin has fed off the festering distrust in institutions sown by the financial crisis. And as populist sentiment has spread in the West, so has the allure of a decentralized currency outside the grasp of governments and banks. Bitcoin’s price jumped after the U.K.’s Brexit vote in 2016—and again when Donald Trump won the White House. Combine such surges with ransomware attacks demanding payment in Bitcoin and buyers from countries like Venezuela seeking refuge from hyperinflation, and Bitcoin’s significance has penetrated the public consciousness like never before. “You do have people turning to it as that disaster hedge, much as they turn to gold,” says Chris Burniske, cofounder of VC firm Placeholder and coauthor of Cryptoassets, a new investor’s guide. “There’s so much ammunition” feeding this movement, agrees Mike Novogratz, a billionaire former hedge fund manager who now has 30% of his net worth invested in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Every establishment failure reinforces the thesis; after debacles like the Wells Fargo fake-account scandal, he asks, “I’m supposed to trust those f–king banks?” Trust them or not, banks and asset managers are poised to flock to Bitcoin too. “Wall Street has just started to dip their toes in,” says Tyler Winklevoss, CEO and cofounder of Gemini, whose cryptocurrency exchange partnered with a more traditional one, CBOE, on Bitcoin futures contracts in December, offering institutional giants a way to participate. “It’s the bottom of the first inning.” Skeptics see a familiar mix of new-paradigm euphoria and get-rich-quick mania, with an unhappy ending looming. “It seems like the dotcom bubble all over again, or the housing bubble all over again,” cautions Robert Shiller, the Nobel Prize–winning economist who literally wrote the book on the subject. (Shiller, who foresaw those crashes, tells Fortune he’s contemplating a fourth edition of his Irrational Exuberance, updated to include the cryptocurrency craze.) Still, for now the stampede of optimists continues, economists and possible calamity be damned. As investors pile in from Main Street to Wall Street, the question becomes, Is Bitcoin’s rise more than an ephemeral rush? Why Bitcoin Soared In August 2010, nearly two years after conceiving of Bitcoin in a landmark white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto, the project’s pseudonymous, as yet unidentified creator (or creators), proposed a thought experiment. “Imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold,” the inventor wrote in a thread on an online Bitcoin forum. The imaginary metal would not be “useful for any practical or ornamental purpose,” Nakamoto wrote, but would have “one special, magical property: [It] can be transported over a communications channel.” Nakamoto was describing a physical analog to Bitcoin, and his point was to address a fundamental paradox of money: How does money get valued as a medium of exchange when its value lies solely in being a medium of exchange? The simple answer: It’s mostly subjective. Perhaps limited supply and instantaneous portability would be enough to justify a market value for Nakamoto’s magic substance. Maybe speculators, “foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange,” would bet on the stuff. “I would definitely want some,” the philosopher teased. Investors, it turns out, wanted some too—even though Bitcoin’s usefulness remains largely theoretical. While some advocates dream of Bitcoin becoming the first universal currency, supplanting central banks and replacing Visa and Mastercard, so far its computerized bits are, at best, equivalent to “digital gold.” They’re good as a place to park money—what economists call a “store of value”—but impractical for payments, says Matt Huang, a partner at VC firm Sequoia. “The popular narrative around using Bitcoin to buy coffee or pizza is a pipe dream at this point.” Fred Ehrsam, ex-president of Coinbase, notes how unusual this “magical Internet money” is in practice. “The thing that gives it value is other people giving it value, which is a strange thing to wrap one’s mind around.” Strange, but hardly unprecedented: Like the green paper our economy is built on—and the gold and silver that predate it—Bitcoin is valuable because we collectively decide it is. “And if enough people agree,” adds Huang, “then the bubble can just persist.” To justify Bitcoin’s tremendous rise, bulls like the Winklevoss twins point to Metcalfe’s Law, which states that a network’s value increases exponentially with each additional participant. Tyler, along with his brother Cameron, entered the national spotlight after suing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, their Harvard schoolmate, for allegedly stealing their business plan. In Bitcoin they’ve found a lucrative second act. Having invested a portion of their $65 million Facebook settlement in the cryptocurrency some years ago, the twins are said to have recently become billionaires. “Money is in many ways the ultimate social network,” Tyler says. “It’s a medium of value that connects us all.” Bitcoin also enjoys the brand recognition shared by innovators that arrive early and dominate fast, like Google in search, Facebook in social networking, and Amazon in e-commerce. “Bitcoin is more contagious than all the other cryptocurrencies because it’s the first mover,” Yale economist Shiller says. “Just like Harvard is considered the most prestigious university because it was the first one” in the U.S. Bitcoin’s uniquely set payout rate—which rewards “miners” for supporting the network with their computers—also helps make it more valuable. Prices of commodities like corn, oil, or gold often plunge when producers pump out supply to meet demand, creating inadvertent gluts. Bitcoin’s supply, in contrast, is forever fixed, by computer code, at a total of 21 million coins (of which about 80% have been produced). And nothing drives prices up like scarcity. In the eyes of some supporters, these advantages add up to virtually unconstrained upside. Cybersecurity pioneer John McAfee recently set a $1 million price target for Bitcoin by 2020 (revised upward from $500,000). Others say the market value could match gold’s, which clocks in at $9.7 trillion—roughly $460,000 per coin. Still, even Bitcoin’s greatest backers acknowledge the possibility that the cryptocurrency’s value could plummet—if, say, regulators in China or the U.S. decided to effectively outlaw it, or if a better and more functional blockchain superseded it. It would hardly be the first craze that fizzled fast. “I think of these as high-tech Beanie Babies or 21st-century tulips,” says Robert Hockett, a law professor at Cornell who gained notoriety after the financial crisis for proposing that cities use “eminent domain” to buy out underwater mortgages. Hockett sees echoes of that disaster in Bitcoin-mania. After a securities regulator warned that people were taking out mortgage loans to speculate on Bitcoin, he noted the irony: “It’s almost as though the cosmic joker out there is pulling our legs as maximally as possible.” Hockett believes blockchain tech will prove a game-changer. But he can’t understand the fascination with Bitcoin, given its copious flaws. As the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin suffers from drawbacks typical of first-generation technology. Transactions lack privacy, and fees commonly run as high as $20, even for transfers of small sums. Hackers run rampant. And the entire network can currently handle, at most, only seven transactions per second, compared to the thousands that Visa and Mastercard process in the same span. “It’s a bit like betting only on Betamax when new video technology was coming online in the 1980s,” Hockett says. Jim Rickards, chief strategist at Meraglim, a financial analytics firm, views Bitcoin with equal fatalism. “I’m extremely bullish on the future” of blockchains, he says, “but I view Bitcoin as a Neanderthal, an evolutionary dead end.” An Endangered Species? When British scientists first encountered the platypus in the late 18th century, they suspected a hoax. The animal didn’t fit in their conventional taxonomic categories. It looked like a mole, but it had a duck’s bill, a beaver’s tail, and an otter’s feet. Plus, it was venomous and laid eggs. Still, “after really careful examination, they said, ‘This is real!’?” says Spencer Bogart, head of research at Blockchain Capital, a venture capital firm devoted to cryptocurrencies and related tech. Bogart is deploying a favorite analogy: “Just like the platypus is not good at being a reptile, a beaver, a duck, or an otter, but it’s great at being a platypus; Bitcoin is not good at being a currency, a commodity, or a fintech company, but it’s great at being Bitcoin. It’s creating its own category and asset class.” When skeptics dismiss Bitcoin, bulls like Bogart push back. Unlike gold, Bitcoin is not static. The software code is under constant development. Its features can be tweaked, improved, and “forked” into new iterations, with the potential to unlock value in as yet unimagined ways. Many Bitcoin fans, for example, have high hopes for the “Lightning Network,” an improvement designed to facilitate quicker payments. If Bitcoin, in its evolution, acquires more compelling utility—making cross-border payments cheap and fast, for example, or enabling “smart” contracts that encode business relationships and automatically disburse payments—those who own stakes in the finite currency could find other would-be users, possibly even deep-pocketed corporations, clamoring to buy from them. For many, this is reason enough to play the long game. Most of the earliest investors seem to be doing just that. People who have held Bitcoin for at least three years—so-called HODLers, a name that stems from a typo for “hold” in an online forum—are largely still HODLing. Their Bitcoins accounted for only 4% of the Bitcoins moved in 2017 to cryptocurrency exchanges, according to research provided to Fortune by Chainalysis, a digital forensics firm. Since moving to an exchange is a rough proxy for an intention to sell, this suggests the vast majority are keeping their windfall in reserve. There are many reasons, of course, to take the wait-and-see approach with Bitcoin—from the fact that it could be worth double tomorrow, to the reality that there are currently few nonspeculative ways to actually spend or use it. The wealth management giant Fidelity, for one, allows employees to buy lunch with Bitcoin in the company cafeteria, but so far the program has been a dud. After all, paying $5 in Bitcoin for a sandwich today could be like paying $100 next Christmas. No one knows. Therein lies a problem: If a cryptocurrency is too volatile to spend, it can’t be a useful currency. On the other hand, if it did someday stabilize and become widely used, its soaring prices would flatten out; it’ll be the “boring investment” that broker Martin Garcia fears. Either outcome—proof that Bitcoin can’t work as a currency, or proof that it can—could suck speculative money out of Bitcoin and precipitate a painful crash. Meanwhile, if the HODLers are sitting on Bitcoins until the currency achieves widespread functionality, just how long will they be willing to wait? “If three years becomes 10 years, the market will collapse,” says investor Novogratz. And in any of these scenarios, Bitcoin’s decentralized nature means there are few if any levers regulators (or anyone else) can pull to put a floor under a Bitcoin implosion. Still, big players have decided these are risks well worth taking. Bubbles usually pop after the “dumb money” chases the smart money, but until now, it has mostly been individuals and small investors who have driven the Bitcoin phenomenon. While people can buy fractions of Bitcoin in increments of as little as $1 on cryptocurrency exchanges, institutional investors have largely been barred from those venues owing to fiduciary and compliance requirements around custody of assets. Now that’s starting to change. Companies like Coinbase and BitGo are rolling out products catering to heavyweight investors, as even the most staid hedge funds and sovereign wealth managers come knocking. Goldman Sachs is said to be considering launching a Bitcoin trading operation. (The bank’s sole cryptocurrency-related investment to date, a startup called Circle, already operates a trading desk.) According to the bulls, the influx of smart money could eclipse all the wealth currently invested in Bitcoin—theoretically more than doubling the market value in one fell swoop. And there’s another reason to believe Bitcoin can go up a lot more before gravity drags its value back down to something stable. Historically, some of the frothiest bubbles have been relatively confined: the 17th-century Dutch tulip bubble left little collateral damage beyond the Netherlands; the dotcom boom blew up Silicon Valley, but international stock markets rebounded relatively quickly. Today, however, anyone in the world can buy Bitcoin—including unbanked peoples ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe who have never had access to capital markets before. “The fact that this is our first global mania,” adds Novogratz, “will make this the single most speculative bubble of our lifetimes.” What’s Next For those reasons and more, says Novogratz, “it wouldn’t be crazy if the crypto bubble hit $10 trillion, and that’s 20 times more than what it is today.” By comparison, he adds, Nasdaq stocks hit a market value of more than $6 trillion before the dotcom bubble burst, not accounting for inflation. Of course, the Nasdaq included Microsoft , Intel , and many other companies that were established business powerhouses, before and after the crash. Bitcoin, for now, remains a platypus of unproven worth. Even the CEO of Coinbase, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the mania, harbors concerns about it. “We probably are in a bubble,” Brian Armstrong confides to Fortune following a recent all-hands meeting. With the total market valuation of all cryptocurrencies well above $500 billion, and few opportunities to put these coins to real use, Armstrong worries that “we haven’t really earned the value of that half trillion.” Nonetheless, in his experience, each time Bitcoin’s price has surged, the valuation has leveled off at a higher plateau—even after crashes. The more Bitcoin’s price runs ahead of its capabilities, bulls say, the more likely that its technology may catch up to the hype. “The financial speculation that’s going on?…?is so important to developing infrastructure,” says Demirors of the Digital Currency Group. The gusher incentivizes programmers and businesspeople to dedicate time and effort to Bitcoin-related projects. Already, farsighted zealots are pouring newfound riches into the cryptocurrency economy, creating blockchain-oriented businesses, like the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini, or starting cryptocurrency-specific hedge funds, as AngelList founder Naval Ravikant is doing. It takes money to make money. Then again, the more wealth that flows into Bitcoin, the more conservative an approach its maintainers may take in updating it. This could present an opportunity for other crypto coins to outmaneuver their forerunner. “I think Bitcoin’s market share is a long-term downward trend because there are so many other interesting technologies being created,” says Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder of crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital. He adds: “As a rule of thumb, I never bet against cryptocurrencies.” To Jerry Brito of Coin Center, the future of Bitcoin isn’t about just the potential for limitless returns, but the promise that his daughter will grow up in a better world. “It’s a world where you can keep your money safe?…?where you can trade with anybody else in the world,” he says. Bitcoin’s allure, in this view, is not about the money, per se, but about technology. Maybe that’s why Brito insists there’s no fiscal significance in the name he and his wife eventually chose for the baby. They call her Penny—but it’s short for Penelope. A version of this article appears in the Jan. 1, 2018 issue of Fortune with the headline “How High Will Bitcoin Go?” |
