There are many accounts of the history of Bitcoin and many predictions of its future. Some commentators report its imminent demise—others point to its latest uptick in price. The writing I read on Bitcoin, excellent though much of it is, increased my desire to understand it. This essay is a report on my effort to puzzle out this financial innovation, the extent to which it is an innovation, and the extent to which it has political implications. Most accounts of money talk about it as a byproduct of social interactions that have become highly elaborated over time, elaborated enough formoney to be so efficient as a token of trust that we accept paper currency from strangers and temporarily hand over credit cards to other strangers without interrogating them or being interrogated. The blockchain-Bitcoin combination, by contrast, is an attempt to launch a monetary system that sees itself as replacing older mechanisms for storing societal trust. It aims to build a language from the ground up. For that reason Bitcoin can seem too large a project to comprehend. It can be a surrogate for a committed embrace of an increasingly technologized future. It can look, as it does to Paul Krugman and Nuriel Roubini, like smoke and mirrors.

中文翻译：

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比特币：读者指南（创意之美）

有很多关于比特币历史的记载以及对其未来的许多预测。一些评论员报告说它即将消亡——其他人则指出它最近的价格上涨。我读到的关于比特币的文章，虽然大部分都很棒，但增加了我理解它的欲望。这篇文章是关于我努力解开这一金融创新的报告，它在多大程度上是一种创新，以及它在多大程度上具有政治影响。大多数关于金钱的账户都将其视为社交互动的副产品，随着时间的推移变得高度复杂，精心制作了足够多的货币以作为信任的象征如此有效，以至于我们接受陌生人的纸币并暂时将信用卡交给其他陌生人审问他们或被审问。相比之下，区块链与比特币的组合，试图推出一种货币体系，该体系将自己视为取代旧的存储社会信任的机制。它旨在从头开始构建一种语言。出于这个原因，比特币似乎是一个难以理解的项目。它可以替代对日益技术化的未来的坚定拥抱。就像保罗克鲁格曼和努里尔鲁比尼一样，它看起来像烟雾和镜子。