比特币退出山。gox和前往华尔街

没有人可以轻易忽视的意义spectacular bankruptcy of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange and a company that helped build the virtual currency. Yet Mt. Gox’s half-billion-dollar loss had a remarkably small effect on the global Bitcoin economy. The collapse, for instance, did not seem to shake the Bitcoin faithful. “I think Bitcoin is interesting because it forces people to rethink what money is and how value moves around the world,” declares Barry Silbert, CEO of New York–basedSecondMarket那which is planning to launch a Bitcoin exchange. “In its current iteration as digital currency and as a global transaction network, it has the potential to radically transform our financial system.”

In many ways, the evolution of Bitcoin continues. For example, Internet retailerOverstock.comreported that after accepting Bitcoin as payment in early January, it had clocked $1 million in sales via the currency by early March; Overstock projected that annual sales could rise to $15 million or more. The number of registered digital wallets atBlockchain.info从1297394年在菲罗斯bruary 25, when Mt. Gox shut down, to 1,370,473 two weeks later, growing at the same rate as before the bankruptcy. Blockchain, based in Skelton, England, publishes online Bitcoin transactions on a real-time basis. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is moving into automated teller machines.Robocoin那a Las Vegas company that operates a network tied to some of the largest Bitcoin exchanges, has placed 14 Bitcoin ATMs around the world, 12 in March alone.

但比特币的真正行动可能会在纽约进行。企业家从风险投资家里等等Marc Andreessen像Silbert和High-ild Investors这样的首席执行官喜欢卡梅伦和泰勒·沃克斯特are beginning to envision a new generation of Bitcoin businesses that engage the U.S. regulatory system. They share a perspective that involves linking the Bitcoin community with Wall Street and investors — plugging Bitcoin into the financial system. And they describe a new era of regulation, particularly for Bitcoin as a global payment system, moving away from Bitcoin as a store of value and ultimate currency. Like so much about Bitcoin, their ideas are future-oriented and dizzyingly optimistic, though they also bring a realism to this emerging virtual currency that it hasn’t always had. But is Bitcoin still Bitcoin once it’s left the Wild West?

The promise of Bitcoin seemed tenuous on February 28, at a packed press conference at Tokyo District Court, where Mt. Gox’s 28-year-old, French-born CEO, Mark Karpelès, revealed that 748,408 customer coins and an additional 100,000 owned by the exchange had disappeared as a result of fraudulent activity by unknown parties, made possible by a “weakness in the system.” The alleged theft represented 7 percent of the 12.4 million coins then in circulation and a loss of $479 million at $565 per Bitcoin, the value on that date. Mt. Gox suffered from a $27 million shortfall, bringing the total loss to $506 million.

The Mt. Gox disaster triggered a firestorm of reaction and comment. Bitcoin was already controversial. But Mt. Gox stirred up demands from regulators, politicians and policymakers that the Bitcoin community needed to go to far greater lengths to demonstrate it could protect digital financial assets; provide secure, reliable and legal transactions; expand capital reserves; create strong financial institutions; and be capable of withstanding attacks.

Today, as Bitcoin moves beyond Mt. Gox, the tempest has receded. “The failure of Mt. Gox is certainly a significant event relative to Bitcoin,” says Edmund Moy, a former director of the U.S. Mint who was tasked by the Treasury Department with monitoring the development of the currency from 2009 to 2011. (Moy is currently chief strategist with Morgan Gold, which provides a vehicle for 401[k] and IRA participants to invest in physical gold.) “But it’s not fatal, because the problem was with Mt. Gox and not Bitcoin.”

What went wrong? Moy says, “A quirk in Bitcoin’s programming allowed for what is known as transactional malleability.” This is a technical way of saying a very clever theft. The flaw first appeared in June 2011, when Mt. Gox was hacked and 25,000 or more coins were transferred from individual accounts. Given Bitcoin’s $15 price at the time, this represented at least $375,000. The flaw allowed the criminal to alter a transaction’s term before it was completed, first creating a delay, then allowing the hacker to change the name of the recipient, according to Moy.

Mt. Gox detected the fraudulent duplicate transactions and reimbursed customers whose coins had been stolen. In response to the security flaw at Mt. Gox, other Bitcoin-related companies attacked the problem and worked around it to secure sites. Mt. Gox also tried to address the flaw, but “it’s hard work to change your own software,” says Moy, and the exchange apparently did not do enough to improve security on individual accounts.

In February hackers probably devised a way around the various security patches, Moy says. Once the vulnerability was discovered, hackers “stormed and overwhelmed the Mt. Gox system.”

但在1月，甚至在攻击之前，山Gox允许在华盛顿地区的比特币交易嘉宾宣布博尔古代货币的比特币交易员所允许提款所允许取款的速度。Isgur报告了1月24日的放缓。“直到他们[山。Gox]突然变得透明，并为他们当前的提款问题提供任何合理的解释和解决方案，MT。gox是mt.Vesuvius，“他在交易所失败前写了一个月。根据日本报纸的报告中的未命名来源yomiuri shimbun那a massive distribution denial-of-service assault on the trading platform hit on February 7, just as the thefts began, and continued until February 10, crippling systems. Most of the attacks came from the U.S. and Europe, the report said. Mt. Gox suspended withdrawals on February 10.

“There are two ways to look at this — strategically and tactically,” says Steven Lord, editor of现代金钱信，关于替代货币的报告。战略性地，比特币的好处仍然存在。“战术上，这已经提出了比特币的幽灵是一个完全不受管制的巨大狂野的西方，”他说。他解释说，失败，提出了对比特币社区中的法规的重要问题。“它的工作是确保没有人偷取货币？”问主。“回答这个问题的努力现在将变得非常加速。”山后两周。Gox失败，日本表示计划规范比特币作为商品和税比特币购买和利润。

Bitcoin companies may need to take matters into their own hands and create a self-regulatory regime, says Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “The best way to ensure Bitcoin’s future is to come up with some voluntary regulations, at a bare minimum,” he says. “Based on whether or not those are sufficient, it will become clear the extent to which regulators will become involved.” Bitcoin companies have collaborated to enhance security and have launched an industry organization called theBitcoin Foundation。

自我监管可能与比特币的分散性质发生冲突，这些性质植根于自由主义和自由市场的精神。奥地利学校经济学家Friedrich Hayek支持了国有货币应与私人货币竞争的想法。值得注意的是，联邦政府至少到目前为止脱离了脱离方式。In a November 18, 2013, letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, then–Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke wrote that although digital currencies could be used for money laundering and raised oversight issues, “there are also areas where [digital currencies] may hold long-term promise.” That sentence is credited with sending Bitcoin prices soaring from $575 to $775.

伯南克还注意到美联储缺乏监管虚拟货币的权力，除非“我们被我们监督的银行组织发布或清除或结算。”伯南克的立场是最近被他的继任者重申的新美食椅珍妮特。在Mt之后不久的国会证词。Gox，Yellen表示，美联储打算避开比特币，她认为财政部应该是监管机构。

“我理解参与比特币的人不希望政府呼吸脖子，”奇尔顿说。“与此同时，如果他们看到潜在的问题，政府将参与。”

Just over a year ago, Bitcoin got something of a green light in the U.S. when the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), part of Treasury, issued guidance that administrators and exchanges of virtual currencies would have to register with the agency as money services businesses and adhere to related reporting and recordkeeping regulations, just like foreign exchange dealers. Far from threatening Bitcoin, that decision was a catalyst. “I would call that ruling a watershed moment,” says Gil Luria, chief analyst for financial technology at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles. “Before that ruling there was a notion that Bitcoin was so ambitious and so revolutionary that the government would necessarily want to squash it.”

Luria says Treasury may have been motivated by the realization that trying to kill Bitcoin would only drive it overseas, where it would thrive using online access to foreign outlets. “What is much preferable to the government is to have third-party entities like Coinbase, BitPay and others emerge that they can regulate,” Luria explains.

So far, three U.S.-based exchange companies have registered with FinCEN as money services businesses, says Braden Perry, a partner in the Prairie Village, Kansas, law firm of Kennyhertz Perry and a former CFTC litigator: San Francisco’s Kraken; Palo Alto, California’s Buttercoin; and New York’s Coinsetter. Perry calls the FinCEN decision “a huge boost for the Bitcoin ecosystem, especially in the U.S., where exchanges were not able to form banking relationships.”

Now they can, if they can persuade banks to accept the risks of providing services to Bitcoin traders. However, Perry points out, there is also a downside: state regulation. New York State Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin Lawsky held hearings on Bitcoin in late January. On March 12 he called for proposals to recommend how the state should regulate virtual-currency exchanges. He said New York wants exchanges to be well capitalized, provide strong cybersecurity protections and conduct background checks on managers.

毫不奇怪，一些国会的一些人也在增加了比特币，但没有立法导致了。领导者：特拉华民主党参议员汤姆克托，国土安全和政府事务委员会主席。11月，卡珀在去年10月的地下在线市场丝绸之路上举行了洗钱，贩毒和其他犯罪活动的听证会。随着Mt的失败Gox，劳珀的兴趣转移到消费者保护。参议员说：“监管机构必须保持警惕，即监测该新兴支付系统。”

比特币到狂野西部的比较 - Mt突出的比较。Gox崩溃 - 指向一个核心问题。比特币交易所应该是力量和信任的支柱，而是比特币经济中最脆弱的部分。这不仅仅是一个监管问题。“What we’ve got in the Bitcoin space right now are exchanges that mostly function more like retail brokerages, you might say, from the institutional perspective,” says Peter Vessenes, CEO of Seattle-based Bitcoin incubator CoinLab and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation. “There aren’t any real institutional-style liquidity providers out there right now,” he adds. “Most of the liquidity on exchanges is in the dollar market, while other currencies lag far behind, including the euro. I think we’ll probably see stronger euro liquidity this year. But liquidity is so thin right now that people would rather trade dollar for coin.”

Wall Street analysts are unimpressed with the oldest Bitcoin exchanges, many of them in developing nations with little regulation. The remedy: more-robust exchanges. “We’re in a stage of passing the torch in terms of exchanges,” says Wedbush’s Luria. “The exchanges we had in the past were ill equipped to deal with volumes and stresses of a more developed market. Gox is a perfect illustration: It was entirely ill equipped to handle stresses of modern trading and the kind of nefarious people who try to hack financial institutions.”

仅有预测,在接下来的几个月里更多的-mature exchanges will emerge, funded by venture capital and operating in the developed world under sophisticated regulatory regimes.

Meanwhile, existing exchanges have moved to fill the vacuum. The volume leader isBitstamp去年从斯洛文尼亚搬到英格兰的斯洛文尼亚，由其CEO，Nejc Kodric。第二大的是BTC-e那which is based in Bulgaria, although its terms of use adhere to Cypriot law. The founders of BTC-e use only their Russian names, Aleksey and Alexander. Russia, whose law forbids surrogate currencies, is investigating the exchange. Then there’s BTC China, based in Shanghai. Once the largest exchange, BTC China saw its volume fall after the country clamped down on Bitcoin, but in recent months it has rebounded. BTC China’s Stanford University–educated CEO is Bobby Lee, whose brother Charlie Lee invented Litecoin, a digital rival to Bitcoin. In early December, China’s central bank and a number of governmental bodies declared Bitcoin to be a “virtual commodity” and not a currency and prohibited banks and payment systems from providing Bitcoin-related services. China and Brazil are the only nations with specific Bitcoin regulations, according to a Law Library of Congress report issued in January.

For Bitcoin to move into its next phase of development, it will need the acceptance of institutional investors and Wall Street, which can provide investment flows and more-sophisticated market discipline. The CEOs of two New York–based Bitcoin companies — Jaron Lukasiewicz at Coinsetter and SecondMarket’s Silbert — believe they can make that happen. “This will be the year when the seeds are placed so institutional Wall Street can really connect to Bitcoin,” Lukasiewicz says. For now, however, regulatory challenges have not been resolved. “The majority of people in the Bitcoin space are retail and not trading on a U.S. exchange. That’s a problem we are solving.”

Lukasiewicz意见海外交易所主要是“建造不良”。CoInsetter已构建一套与买卖订单匹配的电子通信网络。它对流动性的比特斯坦斯交易并预计将增加海外交易所。CoInsetter还在构建自己的财务信息交换（修复）应用程序编程界面（API），银行使用的标准，主要经纪和对冲基金。“这个修复API将可能会将我们技术转化为Wall Street平台的即插即用选项，”Lukasiewicz说。监管挑战是，美国注册经纪人和许可的交易商不能与未经许可的经纪人合作;对于比特币交换来获得必要的许可是至关重要的。

尽管CoInsetter已注册为金钱服务业务，但该公司需要由联邦监管机构许可，以避免各国的许可要求。“现在没有有意义的方式来获得许可证，所以这就是为什么你还没有看到任何美国比特币交换的原因，”Lukasiewicz说。

Coinsetter is talking with brokerages about providing liquidity and exploring possible partnerships. But no one knows which agency would approve a license: the Securities and Exchange Commission, the CFTC or one of the federal banking overseers. Still, Lukasiewicz optimistically adds, “There’s a good chance we'll be the only licensed exchange in the United States in the next few months.”

CoinLab’s Vessenes believes Bitcoin needs more than just well-funded, secure and licensed exchanges. Bitcoin also has to boost so-called market capitalization to attract venture funding and institutional investors. With 12.5 million coins in circulation, the digital currency had a market cap on March 11, at $624 per coin, of $7.8 billion. So far, Bitcoin “mining” — solving complex algorithmic problems with specialized computers in exchange for new Bitcoins — has attracted the most venture funding because it’s the most lucrative. Wedbush estimates $86 million in venture capital had been invested in Bitcoin by mid-February, plus some $200 million in mining equipment.

Despite Mt. Gox, the ardor of early venture enthusiasts remains undimmed. For example, Andreessen, a partner in Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, has invested in Bitcoins — and lost coins at Mt. Gox. “This is likeMF Global那not some huge breakdown of the underlying technology or other exchanges,” he told CNBC in early March. “Bitcoin protocol is unchanged, and other exchanges and companies are doing fine.”

并且有一个纽约的联合广场风险投资的合伙人的弗雷德威尔逊，他投资了乐队并在2月25日在他的博客上写道，他“今天买了一点比特币”。gox关闭了。“当街道上有任何市场血液时，我总是觉得好买。”

另一个比特币Venture Investor是Accel Partners的合作伙伴Jim Breyer，它已经投资于波士顿的支付平台圈互联网金融。谷歌企业将现金纳入Opencoin，公司背后的公司，落后于分布式货币兑换纹波，更近最近的Buttercoin，一个贸易平台希望成为交换。

Centralway, based in Zurich, has also invested in Buttercoin. “We are convinced that in the future alternative currencies will play as important a role as traditional currencies,” says Severin Jan Rüegger, managing partner for Centralway’s regulated investment fund. “Buttercoin will take Bitcoin exchanges to the next level through strong partnerships with key local partners, ensuring full compliance and strict adherence to all local regulation. After all, why shouldn’t buying Bitcoin be as easy and secure as buying dollars or stocks?”

9月，洱市推出比特币投资信托，拥有5000万美元的资产。该基金对机构和高净值个人开放。第二市场正在将数字货币业务旋转到一个未命名的公司，该公司还将开展交流，该市场表示将资本化为2000万美元的现金和比特币资产。

与现有的交流,提出SecondMarket operation will operate a hub-and-spoke arrangement like those of the New York Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange, CEO Silbert says. The exchange is the hub, and broker-dealer members are the spokes. “Direct access to the exchange is not provided except through one of the members,” he says. The exchange will have central clearing. Silbert also plans a self-regulatory organization to provide governance and monitor exchange activities. And Silbert has been chasing the necessary regulatory approvals.

Silbert expects the New York State Department of Financial Services to soon identify who needs a BitLicense, as well as a process for obtaining one. “I think they recognize there’s a pretty good opportunity for New York to emerge as a Bitcoin-friendly, if not a leading, state for Bitcoin entrepreneurs to set up businesses,” he says.

One of the most ambitious efforts to mainstream Bitcoin comes from the now-famous Winklevoss twins. The pair gained notoriety for suing Facebook over claims that social media network founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the concept for the service from them. The pair received a settlement and invested in Bitcoin when it was still in single digits — probably a little more than $1 million. At recent prices their roughly 1 percent of coins outstanding is worth more than $70 million.

In an interview with亚博赞助欧冠，Tyler Winklevoss认为比特币未来的作用作为一种商品 - 即作为一种付款方式。“我不认为这是一种货币，”他说。“这是一种商品，就像商品金钱一样。这是一个可以立即在世界各地交流的资产。这概念通知双胞胎计划推出销售比特币交易所交易资金的公司。7月，他们向Winklevoss比特币信托提供了注册声明。2月修正案增加了关于拟议的ETF指数的日常定价信息，以净资产价值为基础被称为WinkDex。

A Bitcoin ETF is another effort to plug the Bitcoin community into the engines of Wall Street. Kathleen Moriarty, a partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman who represents the twins, notes that there hasn’t been “much, if any, interface” among the Bitcoin community, Wall Street and investors. “Cameron and Tyler feel very strongly there should be reasonable regulation,” she says. “That was part of why they filed the registration statement, because no regulator except for FinCEN was talking about Bitcoin. The CFTC wasn’t. The SEC wasn’t. Nobody was at the time.”

Tyler Winklevoss explains: “Our thinking behind the ETF was basically to answer the question that we get asked all the time by friends and families: ‘How do I buy Bitcoin?’ And the answer really isn’t that easy to give. A lot of people want to buy Bitcoin, but they don’t have the time or the technical savvy to buy it and securely store it. And so, in an effort to reduce those pain points and friction, we looked for a solution, and the one we came up with is an ETF mechanism, which gives you the same exposure to the Bitcoin asset class without having to procure it and secure it yourself.”

Moriarty说，双胞胎被认为是一个类似于最后秋天推出的第二个市场的私人基金，但是，如果你说，“如果你刚刚做私人基金，你不需要真正聘请监管机构。”相反，他们提出了不限于高净值的公共基金。

比特币市场有多大？Winklevoss双胞胎扣为4000亿美元。Simbardet的Silbert将其占金牌投资的5％ - 约为3500亿美元。Wedbush的Luria表示比特币将留下1.9万亿美元的金融金牌，全球外币储备（7.5万亿美元）和避风港货币（4.3万亿美元）。李利亚说，比特币捕获了一片从这三个市场的比例从这三个市场汇集了13.7万亿美元的比例，这可能会使价格十到100倍。

不足之处？竞争性数字货币可能会破坏比特币的“有意义的概率”。只有可能出现更好的加密货币，这才有可能，他还没有看到。

Others are more skeptical. Steven Englander, head of Group of Ten currency strategy at Citigroup forex unit CitiFX, questions the basic premise that Bitcoin has unique value, because the total number of Bitcoins is capped at 21 million. “I have ignored Bitcoin as a store of value,” he wrote in a January 3 note. If investors and miners are able to arbitrage among Bitcoin and more than 50 clones, “the outcome will be that there are many perfect or near-perfect substitutes for Bitcoin and the effective supply will be much larger.” That would make Bitcoin valuations “fragile.”

Englander does not entirely rule out a currency role for Bitcoin. “Investors and central banks are looking for improved stores of value beyond fiat currencies, and Bitcoin possibly may be one of them,” he wrote. If Bitcoin operated within the financial system and authorities embraced it, he thinks it would have a better chance of winning the virtual-currency sweepstakes.

Englander believes Bitcoin has a long lead on potential rivals. Like other close observers, including the Winklevoss twins, he sees Bitcoin’s fundamental benefit as its ability to provide secure payments. “If Bitcoin has flaws in its commercial application that the Bitcoin community does not repair for philosophical reasons, competition will emerge,” he warns. In any event, the Bitcoin story is just beginning. • •