科学美国人60秒 SSS 比特币的发展历史与未来（在线收听）

There are now more than 16 million bitcoins incirculation, with a total market cap of 130 billiondollars—more than the market value of Netflix, Priceline or Starbucks. Just going by numbers, bitcoin is the one coin to rule them all.

目前在流通的比特币数量超过1600万，总市值达1300亿美元——这比奈飞公司、旅游网站旅游网站和星巴克公司的市值都要高。只从数量来说，比特币可以统治所有货币。

But if you consider the spectrum of 600 actively traded cryptocoins as a financialecosystem...you can take an evolutionary approach, and ask: which is the 'fittest' of thecoins?

但是，如果将600种交易活跃加密货币当作一个金融系统来看，那你可以采取渐进的方式，并询问：哪种货币最好?

Or, in other words: "Every cryptocurrency, bitcoin, ethereum, there are many...are a differentspecies." Andrea Baronchelli, a network scientist at City, University of London.

或者换句话说，“加密货币、比特币、以太坊等等，很多不同种类的虚拟货币都在流通。”伦敦大学的网络科学家安德里亚?巴伦凯利说道。

He and his team used evolutionary models to approximate the real-world behavior ofcryptocurrencies. Each week of currency trading was treated as a new generation of progeny. Reporting their results in the journal Royal Society Open Science, they found that a so-called'neutral' model of evolution best explained coin behavior...meaning no coin had a selective advantage.

他和团队使用演化模型来模拟加密货币在真实世界的行为。每周的货币交易都被视为新一代的产生。他们将研究结果发表在《英国皇家学会学报·开放科学》期刊上，他们发现，所谓的“中立”演化模型对货币的行为进行了最好的解释，这说明没有货币有选择优势。

Which implies that: "Investors choose which cryptocurrencies to invest in only proportional tothe cryptocurrency's market share, and nothing else. So they are not apparently consideringother fundamentals like the underlying technology or the purpose for which a certaincryptocurrency has been designed for. They are just sampling each cryptocurrencyproportional to its market share."

这也暗示着：“投资者选择哪种加密货币进行投资，只与加密货币的市场份额成正比，与其他无关。所以，显然他们并没有考虑其他基本因素，比如基本技术或某种加密货币的设计目的等。他们只是对每种加密货币的市场占有率进行抽样。”

And only when investors begin to value coins for a particular attribute—such as theirconvenience or their intrinsic technological advantages—will the market start to actively pickwinners.Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science Science.

只有当投资者开始重视货币的特定属性——比如货币的便利性或其内在的技术优势——市场才会开始积极地挑选赢家。