Bitcoin Bulls Cite a Simple Reason for Its Rally: Not Enough Coins


比特币与其他商品的不同之处在于其供应受到严格限制，这种动态可能导致价格大幅飙升。



比特币为何在本周创下纪录高位？这一全球市值最大加密货币的拥趸们说，这是传统的供求法则的功劳。 6park.com
Why did bitcoin soar to a record this week? Fans of the world’s largest cryptocurrency say it is due to old-fashioned laws of supply and demand. 6park.com
   
就像任何大宗商品的价格一样——无论是黄金、石油还是大豆，比特币的价格对需求波动非常敏感。今年1月份推出直接持有该数字货币的美国ETF、也就是现货比特币ETF之后，对比特币的需求激增。自那以后，投资者向这些ETF狂投了数十亿美元。上述资金流入促使这些基金购买比特币以满足相关需求，从而推高了价格走势。 6park.com
Like the price of any commodity—whether it be gold, oil or soybeans—bitcoin’s price is sensitive to fluctuations in demand. And demand for bitcoin surged after the January launch of U.S. exchange-traded funds, known as “spot” bitcoin ETFs, that directly hold units of the digital currency. Since then, investors have poured billions of dollars into these ETFs. Those inflows prompted the funds to buy bitcoin to meet the demand, bidding up the price. 6park.com
    
但比特币与其他商品的不同之处在于其供应受到严格限制，这种动态可能导致价格大幅飙升。 6park.com
But what makes bitcoin different from just about any other commodity is its tightly constrained supply, a dynamic that can lead to sharp price spikes. 6park.com
    
支撑比特币的计算机代码规定了2,100万枚比特币的硬性上限。其中90%以上的供应已经开采出来了。为了扩大供应，数字运算计算机运行算法来“挖掘”新币。但每天只能挖出大约900枚新比特币，预计在下月出现被称为“减半”的周期性事件后，这一速度将会下降。大约在2140年，当最后一枚比特币被挖出来时，其供应最终将停止增长。 6park.com
The computer code underpinning bitcoin imposes a hard limit of 21 million coins. More than 90% of them have already been created. To expand supply, number-crunching computers run algorithms to “mine” new coins. But they can only crank out about 900 new bitcoins a day, a rate expected to drop next month after a periodic event called the halving. The bitcoin supply is eventually set to stop growing when the final coin is mined, around the year 2140.


位于布达佩斯的这座雕像面部特征模糊，代表比特币的匿名创造者中本聪。

Galaxy Digital研究主管Alex Thorn说：“比特币是世界上最稀缺的资产之一，而且正日益紧俏。” 6park.com
“Bitcoin is one of the scarcest assets in the world and it is becoming scarcer every day,” said Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital. 6park.com
   
谁也不能保证比特币会持续上涨。目前的高价可能会鼓励持有者卖出手中的比特币，锁定利润。之前的几轮比特币牛市之后都出现了毁灭性的暴跌：上一次在2021年11月达到峰值后，比特币在接下来的一年里下跌了70%以上。 6park.com
There is no guarantee that bitcoin will keep rallying. Its current high prices could encourage holders to sell their coins and lock in profits. Bitcoin’s previous bull markets have been followed by devastating crashes: After its last peak in November 2021, bitcoin dropped more than 70% over the next year.  6park.com
   
包括政府官员和在这波涨势中一直保持观望的华尔街高管在内的怀疑论者仍然认为，比特币是一种投机资产，没有内在价值。 6park.com
And skeptics—including government officials and Wall Street executives who have stayed on the sidelines of the rally—still dismiss bitcoin as a speculative asset with no intrinsic value.  6park.com
    
美东时间周四下午4点，比特币的交易价格为67,754.57美元，低于前一天触及的69,208.79美元的历史高点，但自今年年初以来仍上涨了59%。 6park.com
Bitcoin was trading at $67,754.57 at 4 p.m. ET Thursday, down from the record high of $69,208.79 that it touched the previous day, but still up 59% since the start of the year. 6park.com
   
用经济学术语来说，比特币的供应极度缺乏弹性，这意味着它不会对价格变动做出反应。具有这种特性的商品很容易突然出现大幅的价格震荡。例如，天然气生产商无法在短期内大幅增加天然气产量，以利用高价格。 6park.com
In economics jargon, the supply of bitcoin is highly inelastic, meaning it doesn’t respond to price moves. Commodities that have this property are prone to bursts of price volatility. Producers of natural gas, for instance, can’t pump substantially more gas in the short term to take advantage of high prices.  6park.com
    
但从长期来看，天然气价格持续走高会促使钻探者去发掘新的天然气来源。同样，当金价长期处于高位时，金矿开采者就可以开展成本高昂的新开采项目，在更偏远的地方搜寻黄金。 6park.com
In the long term, though, sustained high prices for natural gas motivate drillers to discover new sources of the fuel. Similarly, when gold prices are elevated for lengthy periods, gold miners can pursue costly new mining projects, hunting for the precious metal in ever more exotic places. 



比特币却不是这样。比特币代码中的规则限定了挖矿者可向市场引入的新币的速度，这个速度会定期减半。在过去，比特币的价格会在这样的“减半”之前攀升，因为加密货币投资者预计供应会更加紧张。化名中本聪(Satoshi Nakamoto)的比特币创造者提出了比特币应该有一个固定的最大供应量的想法，他曾写道，这样的设计将使比特币的价值不会受到通胀影响。 6park.com
Bitcoin doesn’t work that way. Rules baked into bitcoin’s code specify the rate at which miners can bring new coins into the market, a rate that is periodically cut in half. In the past, bitcoin’s price has climbed ahead of such halvings, as crypto investors anticipate tighter supplies. And the idea that bitcoin should have a fixed maximum supply comes from Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s anonymous creator, who wrote that such a design would keep bitcoin inflation-free. 6park.com
   
投资公司Swan Bitcoin的私人客户服务主管Steven Lubka说：“从根本上说，比特币没有能力为市场带来额外的供应。” 6park.com
“There is fundamentally no ability to bring additional supply to the market,” said Steven Lubka, head of private client services at investment firm Swan Bitcoin. 6park.com
   
这使得比特币对需求的增长非常敏感，自1月11日推出以来，新的比特币ETF一直在大举买入比特币。当天，九只新的现货比特币ETF首次上市交易，而一只现有的基金Grayscale Bitcoin Trust也转换成了ETF。从那以来，净流入这些ETF的资金已接近80亿美元，流入这九只新基金的资金量超过Grayscale的资金流出量。 6park.com
This makes bitcoin sensitive to increases in demand—and the new ETFs have been gobbling up bitcoins since their launch on Jan. 11. On that day, nine new spot bitcoin ETFs made their debut for trading, while an existing fund, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, converted into an ETF. Close to $8 billion have flowed into the ETFs since then, on a net basis, with inflows into the nine new funds outpacing outflows from Grayscale. 6park.com
   
据投资研究公司ByteTree估计，截至本周二，全球ETF或其他投资基金持有的比特币占全球总供应量的5%，高于1月11日上述美国新ETF开始交易时的4.4%。 6park.com
As of Tuesday, 5% of the world’s total supply of bitcoin was held by ETFs or other investment funds globally, up from 4.4% on Jan. 11, when the new U.S. ETFs started trading, according to estimates from investment research firm ByteTree. 6park.com
    
当ETF为满足投资者需求而购买新的比特币时，它们通常依赖于自营交易公司，如芝加哥交易巨头DRW Holdings旗下的Cumberland或纽约的Jane Street Capital。这些公司的加密货币交易部门会在数字货币市场上寻找大量比特币，以满足基金的买单需求。 6park.com
When the ETFs buy new bitcoins to meet investor demand, they generally rely on proprietary trading firms such as Cumberland, a unit of Chicago-based trading giant DRW Holdings, or New York-based Jane Street Capital. These firms run crypto trading desks that scour the digital-currency markets for big slugs of bitcoin to fill the funds’ orders. 6park.com
   
一些分析师表示，从持有大量比特币的投资者那里获得比特币已变得越来越困难。公开的区块链数据显示，全球约1960万枚比特币中的大部分供应都放在数字钱包里，这些钱包很少动用这些比特币，可能是因为它们属于拒绝出售的长期比特币持有者，也可能是因为持有者丢失了密码，导致他们的比特币无法获取。 6park.com
Some analysts say it has become increasingly difficult to obtain bitcoin from big holders. Public blockchain data show that much of the world’s supply of about 19.6 million bitcoins is located in digital wallets that rarely move the coins—potentially because they belong to long-term bitcoin holders who refuse to sell, or perhaps because the owners lost their passwords, rendering their coins inaccessible. 6park.com
   
瑞士私人银行瑞士宝盛(Julius Baer)的分析师Manuel Villegas在上周的一份研究报告中表示，在过去六个月中，大约80%的比特币供应没有转手。Villegas写道，再加上ETF的流入，以及数据显示交易所可供出售的比特币库存有限，这“可能会加剧供应紧张”。 6park.com
About 80% of bitcoin’s supply hasn’t changed hands during the past six months, Swiss private bank Julius Baer analyst Manuel Villegas said in a research note last week. Coupled with the ETF inflows, and data suggesting limited inventories of bitcoin available for sale on exchanges, that “could set the stage for an intensified supply squeeze,” Villegas wrote. 6park.com
    
还有人说，有大量卖家愿意在比特币反弹时抛售比特币，这可能是比特币本周短暂突破2021年纪录后势头停滞的一个原因。 6park.com
Others say there have been plenty of sellers willing to sell into the rally—potentially a reason why bitcoin’s momentum stalled this week after it briefly surpassed its 2021 record.  6park.com
   
DRW关系管理主管Rob Strebel说，在最近几周资金大量流入ETF的情况下，Cumberland在寻找比特币以满足ETF对比特币的需求方面并没有遇到困难。他说，公司从大型加密货币投资者那里获得了大量比特币，这些投资者在比特币价格较低时买入，并借此机会获利回吐。 6park.com
Cumberland didn’t have a problem finding bitcoin to meet the ETFs’ demand for the coins during the recent weeks of heavy ETF inflows, said Rob Strebel, head of relationship management at DRW. The firm got much of that bitcoin from big crypto investors who bought bitcoin when it was cheaper and took the opportunity to take profits, he said. 6park.com
   
“当你看到一个市场呈抛物线走势时，就像比特币一样，这自然是一个卖出的机会，”Strebel说。“尤其是当人们回忆起2021年的上一轮牛市时，就会从桌面上拿走一些筹码。” 6park.com
“When you see a market go parabolic, as we have with bitcoin, it’s a natural selling opportunity,” Strebel said. “And especially as people remember the last bull market of 2021, they’re taking some chips off the table.”