经济学人:投资者:谨慎责无旁贷(1)

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　　Buttonwood: Investor¹ Caution Obligatory² 梧桐树专栏：投资者，谨慎责无旁贷

　　A new craze attracts the attention of regulators 一场新的狂热引起监管者的关注

　　Here is the deal. 有这样一笔买卖。

　　You can buy an entry in a computer ledger³ issued by a startup company on the basis of an unregulated prospectus⁴. 你可以购买由某家初创公司根据没接受监管的招股书发行的计算机分类账户中的一个条目。

　　It is called an “initial coin offering” or ICO. 这被称为“首次货币发行”（initial coin offering），简称ICO。

　　But though the ledger entry is called a coin, you cannot spend it in any shop. 但是，尽管这种账目被称为一种货币，你却无法在任何一家商店中把它花出去。

　　And whereas the use of the term ICO makes it sound like an IPO (initial public offering),  而且，尽管ICO一词的使用使之听上去像是一次IPO（initial public offering 股票首次公开发行），

　　the process whereby a firm lists on a stockmarket, coin ownership does not necessarily get you equity⁵ in the company concerned. 即公司借以在股票市场上市的程序。但是，货币的所有权并不必然地能让你得到相关公司的权益。

　　This sounds like the kind of bargain that would appeal only to people who reply to e-mails from Nigerian princes offering to transfer millions to their accounts. 这听起来就像是只会诉诸于给来自尼日利亚王子们要求给他们的转帐几百万美元的邮件做回复的人的那种交易。

　　But ICOs may well be the most popular investment craze since the dotcom boom of 1999-2000; even Paris Hilton, a celebrity⁶ heiress, has jumped on the bandwagon. 但是，ICO很可能是1999-2000年网络泡沫以来最受欢迎的投资狂热；就连名媛帕里斯·希尔顿也上车了。

　　The list of active, upcoming and recent ICOs on the website “ICO alert” covers 31 pages of A4 paper and includes around 600 companies. 在网站“ICO alert”上，正在进行之中、即将到来的以及近期的ICO名单有31页A4纸之长，包括大约600家公司。

　　More than $2bn has been raised in total. 总共已有2千多亿美元被募集起来。

　　There is a serious side to the craze, just as there was with the dotcom boom. 恰如网络泡沫一样，这场狂热有其严重的一面。

　　The technology that underpins⁷ digital currencies—the blockchain—is an important development. 支撑数字货币的技术——区块链——是一种重要的发展。

　　This is a secure, decentralised ledger that everyone can inspect but that no single user controls. 这是一种人人都可以查阅，但是没有任何一位用户可以控制的安全的、去中央化的帐目。

　　It seems likely to be adapted for use across the financial system—to record property transactions, for example. 它似乎有可能为了能够用在整个金融体系中——例如，记录房产交易——而接受改造。

　　Many ICOs are designed to finance applications that will make use of the blockchain—for trading currencies, lending money or searching for jobs. 很多ICO是为了给将把区块链用于交易货币、出借资金或是求职的应用筹集资金而设计的。

　　In some cases, the “coins” can be exchanged for services on the site. 在某些个例中，“货币”可用于交换网站上的服务。

　　In a way, this is like selling air miles in a startup airline; investors⁸ can either use the miles for flights or hope they can trade them at a profit. 从某种程度上来说，这就像是似于在新航线中出售空中里程一样；投资者既可以把里程用于飞行，也可以希望能够获利交易它们。

　　For the business, it is also a way of creating demand for the product they are selling. 对于商界来说，它还是一种为它们正在销售的产品创造需求的方式。

　　But in plenty of cases, an ICO is just a way of raising capital without all the hassle of meeting regulatory requirements, or the burden of paying interest to a bank. 但是，在大多数实例中，ICO仅仅是一种融资方式而已，或是回避了满足监管需求的所有麻烦，或是省去了给银行支付利息的负担。

　　Businesses are able to achieve this feat⁹ because investors hope that the coins will rise rapidly in value,  商界能够将其做大，是因为投资者希望这些货币会快速升值，

　　as has been the case with bitcoin or ethereum, the best-known digital currencies, which have seen stellar gains in the past year. 如同在过去一年中取得了丰厚回报的最有名的数字货币比特币或者乙太币那样。

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