Government crypto purchases would merely enrich current holders at the public’s expense.
政府购买加密货币只会让当前持有者致富，而牺牲公众利益。

2024年12月9日 at GMT+8 19:00

By The Editorial Board
编委会撰文

The Editorial Board publishes the views of the editors across a range of national and global affairs. 编辑委员会发表编辑们对一系列国家和全球事务的观点。

What goes up can come down. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

能涨的东西也能跌下来。 摄影师：SeongJoon Cho/彭博社

Does the US government need a strategic reserve dedicated to Bitcoin, as President-elect Donald Trump seems to be contemplating? At risk of oversimplifying: no. In fact, the idea looks like the biggest crypto rip-off yet.
美国政府是否需要像当选总统唐纳德·特朗普似乎正在考虑的那样，建立专门用于比特币的战略储备？存在过于简单化的风险：不。事实上，这个想法看起来像是迄今为止最大的加密货币诈骗。

Bitcoin has soared more than 50% since Nov. 4, topping $100,000 in part on hopes that crypto advocates — having donated some $135 million to Trump and dozens of successful congressional campaigns — will persuade Trump to make the reserve a reality. Much depends on the details.
自 11 月 4 日以来，比特币已飙升超过 50%，突破 10 万美元，部分原因是加密货币倡导者——已向特朗普捐赠了约 1.35 亿美元，并在数十次成功的国会竞选活动中——将说服特朗普将储备变为现实。很大程度上取决于细节。

Trump has so far suggested that this scheme might only entail holding onto Bitcoins that the government has already confiscated in criminal cases (about 200,000, or $20 billion worth). But a bill introduced by crypto-friendly Senator Cynthia Lummis would go much further, requiring the government to purchase another million Bitcoin over five years and then hold the stockpile for at least another 20.
特朗普迄今为止表示，该计划可能只需要保留政府已在刑事案件中没收的比特币（约 20 万枚，即价值 200 亿美元）。但对加密货币友好的参议员 Cynthia Lummis 提出的一项法案走得更远，要求政府在五年内再购买 100 万比特币，然后再持有至少 20 个比特币的库存。

To what end? The government maintains various strategic reserves — of oil, for example — to ensure supplies of commodities crucial to the economy or to the nation’s security. The Federal Reserve buys and sells assets to encourage full employment, low inflation and a stable financial system.
为了什么目的？政府维持各种战略储备——例如石油——以确保对经济或国家安全至关重要的商品供应。美联储买卖资产是为了鼓励充分就业、低通胀和稳定的金融体系。

Buying Bitcoin with taxpayer dollars would serve no such public purpose. It has no industrial use, no claim to actual cash flows, no connection to the real economy. It’s a purely speculative instrument. Its price depends entirely on what a greater fool is willing to pay.
用纳税人的钱购买比特币不会有这样的公共目的。它没有工业用途，没有实际现金流量，与实体经济没有联系。它纯粹是一种投机工具。它的价格完全取决于一个更大的傻瓜愿意付出什么。

Creating such a reserve would, however, vastly enrich owners of existing Bitcoin. The post-election crypto rally offers a glimpse of what might happen, as buyers rushed to get ahead of the government’s purchases. If the world’s investors allocated even a small piece of their holdings to Bitcoin, the roughly 20 million tokens in existence would quickly rise in value, especially since only a fraction of those tokens actually trades.
然而，建立这样的储备将极大地丰富现有比特币的所有者。大选后的加密货币反弹让人们看到了可能发生的情况，因为买家争先恐后地抢在政府购买之前。如果世界各地的投资者将其持有的一小部分分配给比特币，那么现有的大约 2000 万种代币的价值就会迅速上涨，特别是因为这些代币中只有一小部分实际上可以进行交易。

The government, meanwhile, would be playing the greater fool — at a cost potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars. To fund the reserve, either the Treasury would have to borrow, further increasing the nation’s debts and interest costs, or the Fed would have to create the money, fueling inflation and undermining confidence in the dollar. (Involving the government’s gold, as Lummis has proposed, would obscure but not alleviate this fundamental problem.)
与此同时，政府将扮演更大的傻瓜——可能会损失数千亿美元。为了为储备金提供资金，要么财政部必须借款，进一步增加国家的债务和利息成本，要么美联储必须创造货币，从而加剧通货膨胀并削弱人们对美元的信心。 （正如卢米斯所提议的那样，将政府的黄金纳入其中将掩盖但不能缓解这一根本问题。）

In return, the government would get a pile of tokens that generate no income in the form of interest or dividends. Crypto advocates insist it would be able to sell at a profit and pay down its debts. But given the forced nature of the purchases, and Bitcoin’s volatility and lack of fundamental value, the risk of losses would be great. The reserve could ultimately end up worthless.
作为回报，政府将获得一堆不产生利息或股息形式收入的代币。加密货币倡导者坚称，它将能够通过出售获利并偿还债务。但考虑到购买的强制性质，以及比特币的波动性和缺乏基本价值，损失的风险将会很大。该储备最终可能会变得毫无价值。

Worse, the combination of rising prices and government backing could make Bitcoin irresistible to banks and other financial institutions. If regulators allowed it, they could lend dollars against the collateral of digital tokens, enabling holders to turn crypto wealth into real money. If that collateral lost significant value, another bailout of the financial system wouldn’t be unthinkable.
更糟糕的是，价格上涨和政府支持的结合可能会让银行和其他金融机构无法抗拒比特币。如果监管机构允许，他们可以用数字代币作为抵押品借出美元，使持有者能够将加密货币财富转化为真实货币。如果该抵押品大幅贬值，再次对金融体系进行救助也并非不可想象。

Consider the irony. Bitcoin was essentially an anarchist project, allowing people to conduct transactions without relying on centralized intermediaries or governments. Now, the centralized intermediaries that have come to dominate trading — such as crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc. — are lobbying the government for what amounts to a vast subsidy.
考虑一下其中的讽刺意义。比特币本质上是一个无政府主义项目，允许人们在不依赖中心化中介机构或政府的情况下进行交易。现在，已经主导交易的中心化中介机构——例如加密货币交易所 Coinbase Global Inc.——正在游说政府提供相当于巨额的补贴。

The consequences for taxpayers could be dire. If Trump wants to reopen the crypto casino, so be it. But what happens in crypto should stay in crypto. Putting taxpayer dollars on the table could put millions of Americans at risk.
对纳税人来说，后果可能是可怕的。如果特朗普想重新开放加密货币赌场，那就这样吧。但加密货币中发生的事情应该留在加密货币中。将纳税人的钱拿出来可能会让数百万美国人面临风险。