比特币和去增长：可持续世界的新货币体系

比特币经常因奖励早期采用者而不是后来采用者而受到批评，批评者经常声称这将创造一类新的加密寡头来统治世界。

Austrian economics is a heterodox school of economic thought that emphasizes the role of subjective value and the importance of sound money. While Austrian economics is often associated with bitcoin, it is not the only heterodox economic theory that describes the importance of a type of money that sounds strikingly like bitcoin. Aspects of degrowth and ecological economics also promote an end to fiat and inflationary currencies.

奥地利经济学是一个非正统的经济思想流派，强调主观价值的作用和稳健货币的重要性。虽然奥地利学派经济学经常与比特币联系在一起，但它并不是唯一描述一种听起来与比特币惊人相似的货币重要性的非正统经济理论。去增长和生态经济学的各个方面也促进了法定货币和通货膨胀货币的终结。

Degrowth is a social, political, and economic movement that advocates for a reduction in the overall energy consumption of wealthy countries to make room for developing countries to increase theirs. There is a growing call from the climate movement for the world to move away from economic growth and toward degrowth. Ecological economics provides a concrete foundation for how this would work through a convergence of degrowth-growth into an overall steady-state economy.

去增长是一项社会、政治和经济运动，主张减少富裕国家的总体能源消耗，为发展中国家增加能源消耗腾出空间。气候运动越来越多地呼吁世界从经济增长转向去增长。生态经济学为如何通过去增长-增长融合到整体稳态经济中发挥作用提供了具体的基础。

A steady-state economy is one that is in line with what our planet is capable of sustaining. Contrary to what some may think, there are no species on this planet that can outgrow their habitat and survive for very long thereafter. Ecological economist Brian Czech calls a steady-state economy “economics for a full-world”; one where the economy has grown so big that it is pushing the environment to its limits.

稳态经济是一种符合我们地球承受能力的经济。与某些人的想法相反，这个星球上没有任何物种能够在超出其栖息地范围后存活很长时间。生态经济学家布赖恩·捷克（Brian Czech）将稳态经济称为“整个世界的经济学”；经济增长如此之大，以至于将环境推向极限。

Degrowth is more than steady-state economics and energy use, though. It also promotes an end to fiat, inflationary, and debt-based currencies. Degrowth encourages localism and frugal living that is in line with nature. One could argue that degrowth is exactly what Bitcoiner low-time preference looks like when applied across all aspects of the economy. Degrowth means eliminating wasteful consumerism, bullshit jobs, and rent-seeking. It also promotes indigenous methods of natural management and permaculture.

不过，去增长不仅仅是稳态经济和能源使用。它还促进结束法定货币、通货膨胀货币和债务货币。 Degrowth 鼓励地方主义和符合自然的节俭生活。有人可能会说，去增长正是比特币人的低时偏好在应用于经济的各个方面时的样子。去增长意味着消除浪费的消费主义、垃圾工作和寻租。它还推广自然管理和永续农业的本土方法。

If we want degrowth, then we have to build new infrastructure to sustain this low-time preference way of living. If we are going to eliminate fiat, inflation, and debt-based currencies, then we will need to build a robust, decentralized, and secure monetary network that we can use to keep our degrowth economic system in planetary check.

如果我们想要去增长，那么我们就必须建设新的基础设施来维持这种低时间偏好的生活方式。如果我们要消除法定货币、通货膨胀和债务货币，那么我们将需要建立一个强大的、去中心化的和安全的货币网络，我们可以用它来控制我们的经济体系的衰退。

In Supply Shock: Economic Growth at the Crossroads, Czech explains that inflation happens “when a monetary authority (such as the Federal Reserve in the United States) increases the money supply faster than the real economy can grow”. Czech is not an Austrian economist but a full-on degrowther. He continues, “recent periods of rapid, real economic growth… have tended to result in inflation, because the monetary authorities are too removed from the realities of economic life to understand ecological limits to growth”.

在《供应冲击：十字路口的经济增长》一书中，捷克解释说，“当货币当局（例如美国的美联储）货币供应量的增加速度快于实体经济的增长速度时”，就会发生通货膨胀。捷克不是一位奥地利经济学家，而是一位十足的去增长论者。他继续说道，“最近一段时期的快速、实际的经济增长……往往会导致通货膨胀，因为货币当局太脱离经济生活的现实，无法理解增长的生态限制”。

From the ecological economics perspective, the origin of money is fundamentally a result of agricultural surplus; not debt, not the state. Although these certainly play a second-order role in the development and adoption of money, without agricultural surplus, there would be no division of labor, and without division of labor, there would be no need for exchange. Taken to the extreme, if our food systems completely collapsed this year, everything else would go with it and each of us would be back to spending most of our time finding enough food to survive; we would not need money.

从生态经济学的角度来看，货币的起源从根本上来说是农业剩余的结果；不是债务，不是国家。尽管这些在货币的发展和采用中确实发挥着次要作用，但没有农业剩余，就不会有劳动分工，而没有劳动分工，也就不需要交换。极端地说，如果我们的粮食系统今年完全崩溃，其他一切都会随之消失，我们每个人都将花大部分时间寻找足够的食物来生存；我们不需要钱。

From the first and second laws of thermodynamics, we know that energy is neither created nor destroyed and that when energy is converted the process is imperfect, and some of it dissipates. This means that these physical laws place an ecological limit on our planet that ultimately sets an upper bound on agricultural surplus. From an ecological economics standpoint, this means that money has a limit.

从热力学第一定律和第二定律，我们知道能量既不会被创造也不会被破坏，并且当能量转换时，这个过程是不完美的，并且其中一些会消散。这意味着这些物理定律对我们的星球施加了生态限制，最终设定了农业剩余的上限。从生态经济学的角度来看，这意味着金钱是有限度的。

Bitcoin is money and it has a limit, too. In 2140, the last of 21 million bitcoin will be minted. In the early 2030s, 98% of all bitcoin will have been created. Bitcoin’s energy consumption grows so long as the value of bitcoin sustains its growth. At some point, if bitcoin becomes the world’s money standard, all the world’s value will be on the monetary network. When that happens, the growth of the network’s hash rate and thus energy consumption will have to slow down and likely reach a steady state of its own. This will happen because of diminishing returns as the network mining difficulty increases and competition is tight.

比特币是货币，它也有限制。 2140 年，最后 2100 万枚比特币将被铸造出来。到 2030 年代初期，98% 的比特币将被创造出来。只要比特币的价值持续增长，比特币的能源消耗就会增长。在某种程度上，如果比特币成为世界货币标准，那么世界上所有的价值都将存在于货币网络上。当这种情况发生时，网络哈希率的增长以及能源消耗将不得不放缓，并可能达到自己的稳定状态。之所以会发生这种情况，是因为随着网络挖矿难度的增加和竞争的激烈，收益递减。

If ecological economic theory is right, then the total value of the Bitcoin network should reflect the full planetary limit to available resources that provide an agricultural surplus. Since we cannot create more energy, it must therefore be true that we cannot create more bitcoin. Our socio-economic system will have to buy into this idea of limits and that’s where the broader societal prescriptions from degrowth will be useful. In addition, there’s a saying in the bitcoin community; “you don’t change bitcoin, bitcoin changes you.” It’s possible that adopting bitcoin will turn people away from instant gratification consumerism, something bitcoiners colloquially refer to as high-time preference.

如果生态经济理论是正确的，那么比特币网络的总价值应该反映提供农业剩余的可用资源的全部地球限制。由于我们无法创造更多的能源，因此我们也无法创造更多的比特币。我们的社会经济体系必须接受这种限制观念，而这正是来自去增长的更广泛的社会处方将发挥作用的地方。另外，比特币社区有一句话； “你不会改变比特币，而是比特币改变了你。”采用比特币可能会让人们远离即时满足的消费主义，比特币支持者通俗地称之为“高时间偏好”。

Because mining happens globally, we expect that energy consumption will grow during the period of economic convergence. If degrowthers, ecological economists, environmentalists, and climate activists

由于采矿业在全球范围内进行，我们预计在经济趋同期间能源消耗将会增长。如果去增长论者、生态经济学家、环保主义者和气候活动家