此物一出天下反：话说BitCoin

据说，BitCoin的创始人Satoshi Nakamoto是坐时间机器回来专门写这个程序的⋯⋯用大白话简单地讲，BitCoin就是一种电子货币——只不过，这种崭新的电子货币不受任何政府、任何银行的控制。

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20110903074044/http://www.lixiaolai.com:80/archives/10589.html

This Thing Turns the World Upside Down: On Bitcoin

> By Li Xiaolai · 2011-05-23 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20110903074044/http://www.lixiaolai.com:80/archives/10589.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

They say that [BitCoin](http://bitcoin.org/)'s creator [Satoshi Nakamoto](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto) [came back in a time machine specifically to write this program](http://twitter.com/virushuo/status/72311314399244289)...

[［图］](http://bitcoin.org)

Put simply in plain language, BitCoin is a kind of electronic currency—except that this brand-new electronic currency isn't controlled by any government or any bank. Its appearance makes the imagination run without limit—at the very least, it's foreseeable that in the future, outside the traditional ones, there will exist "a financial market nobody can control." Some people have already exclaimed that "[BitCoin is the most dangerous open-source project in history](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=BitCoin%E6%98%AF%E5%8F%B2%E4%B8%8A%E6%9C%80%E5%8D%B1%E9%99%A9%E7%9A%84%E5%BC%80%E6%BA%90%E9%A1%B9%E7%9B%AE)" ([English original](http://launch.is/blog/l019-bitcoin-p2p-currency-the-most-dangerous-project-weve-ev.html)).

Most people's first reaction is, "Does BitCoin **really** have value?" In fact, [whether a currency has value depends only on whether people are willing to use it to buy and sell](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#Where_does_the_value_of_Bitcoin_stem_from?_What_backs_up_Bitcoin?). And in reality, a government guaranteeing with gold isn't actually reliable: governments can always secretly print more money (a government can guarantee, but who supervises the government? And who really has the ability to supervise it?); history serves as a lesson. And in real life [a large number of people are already willing to accept BitCoin as payment](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade). And because many people are already willing to buy BitCoin with traditional currency (this is essentially no different from your buying US dollars with renminbi), BitCoin already has corresponding exchange rates, and people have long been providing [services for buying and selling BitCoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Selling_bitcoins).

So how do you get BitCoin? The simplest channel is [buying BitCoin directly](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Buying_bitcoins). Another channel is taking part in [Mining](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Mining) (the Chinese translation can only make do with 挖矿, "digging ore"). In the BitCoin system, the information of every transaction (payment, receipt) is public (but other information about buyer and seller apart from the ID is hidden), and any payment can only be completed after a large number of confirmations—this requires a large amount of computing power to sustain. And BitCoin is a P2P network: any machine, as long as it has installed and is running the client, can contribute its computing power—the whole P2P system will reward these users who contribute computing power with BitCoin. Several years (possibly several centuries, even several hundred years) later, after the system has completed generating the originally planned 21 million BitCoins, it will use "[transaction fees](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees)" instead of "issuing BitCoint" as the reward. At present the system has generated about 1/3 of the 21 million BitCoins.

Having read this far, you're very likely still in a fog, but one important question has already surfaced in your mind: **how do you mine?** The simplest way is to download and install the BitCoint client [[official download page](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page)]; there are currently a [Windows version](https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.21/bitcoin-0.3.21-win32-setup.exe/download), a [Mac version](https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.21/bitcoin-0.3.21-macosx.zip/download) and a [Linux version](https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.21/bitcoin-0.3.21-linux.tar.gz/download).

Below is a screenshot of the "Generating Coins" menu in the Mac version (the official Clients for Windows/Linux all look the same):

［图］

Then it's just patient waiting. Because transaction volume keeps growing, the amount of computation needed to generate one Coin also keeps growing (because every transaction is public and only takes effect after confirmation by multiple p2p nodes—the technical details can't be explained in a sentence or two), so the time to generate one "coin" keeps getting longer...

They say that when the BitCoin system had just started running, generating coins was much easier than now—and obviously in the future it will be harder than now. In that period CPU computing power was enough, but now it's different: "mining" with CPU (central processing unit) computing power has become too inefficient, and it's basically very hard to mine anything; only with a GPU (discrete graphics card processor) can you mine [[see here for detailed technical details](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_a_GPU_mines_faster_than_a_CPU)]. The current situation is that GPU mining power is stronger than CPU, and AMD graphics cards' mining power is better than (about 3~5 times) Nvidia's mining power. Many people have already assembled computers specifically for mining; if you too want to be a "money fiend," you can [refer to this page](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison) and buy a graphics card you like... If that's still not efficient enough, you can join a mining team, everyone mines together, and in the end it's divided up according to contribution—this is called "[Pooled Mining](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pooled_mining)" (in Chinese we can only make do: 挖矿池, "mining pool"?).

Another way is for webmasters to add a piece of javascript to their own web pages, so that readers who visit the page contribute part of their computing power to mine a bit for them: register an account at [bitp.it](http://api.bitp.it/), then complete registration as required [the registration email will tell you how to register a Mining Pool at the same time] and you can get the corresponding javascript script.

Because generating BitCoin is hard, as a novice you absolutely can't miss this website: <https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/>. It gives each registered user 0.02 BitCoin free—as [Translator's note: the original writes 随者, literally "follower"; 随着 ("as") is meant; translated by the intended sense] time goes on, the amount it gives away free will get smaller and smaller, so hurry.

My account [18D5KhL4zt3St8XN45ofSfU193eAcxbQ9V] currently holds only these 0.02 BitCoin I got for free. I tried Mining a bit and found that my computers' graphics cards are all too poor... so I've given up for now. Yesterday I heard that a person on Twitter already had 4 BitCoins, so [Translator's note: the original writes 与, literally "with"; 于是 ("so") is likely meant; translated by the intended sense] everyone acknowledged him as a "big holder"; then today someone else admitted having more than 100 BitCoins; and later someone dug up data saying the richest single account on Earth holds 250,000 BitCoins... In the future, when I have time to write some useful book, I may consider pricing it in BitCoin.

What exactly is the significance of BitCoin?

Apart from actual buying and selling, its greatest significance is that it weakens the role of governments and banks. The inventors and users of BitCoin are, in essence, [anarchists, monetary conspiracy theorists and opponents of the gold standard](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#Bitcoin_community_are_anarchist/conspiracy_theorist/gold_standard_weenies). This is why "when this thing appears, the world turns upside down."

In theory, banning the use of BitCoin is basically impossible, just as Napster could be forced to close, but there's no way to make everyone in the world stop using p2p software such as eMule (电驴). This invention, like any important invention in history, once it appears, can't fail to have a major impact. When new things appear, people often pay more attention to their possible harms (just as opponents of genetically modified food or opponents of cloning technology do). Because of its uncontrollability, people are discussing that terrorists might use BitCoint to buy and sell nuclear weapons—because BitCoin transactions can't be tracked. In fact, BitCoin's benefits may be greater. At the very least, one is: **no human factor can increase the money supply.**