The Rush Is On to Coin Virtual Money With Real Value
【By NATHANIEL POPPER／聯合報／馮克芸譯】
If cash is king, virtual cash may be the crown prince in waiting.
Programmers around the world have been churning out new digital currencies that try to improve on the concept of bitcoin, the hot but controversial virtual money that has swept the Internet.
Dozens of ideas are jockeying for the market. At last count, a website that tracks the market, coinmarketcap.com, listed 36 socalled crypto-currencies, with names like bitbar, freicoin and cryptogenic bullion, and new ones are being added each month.
The online payment system viewed by many insiders as having the best chance of supplanting bitcoin, however, is Ripple, founded in San Francisco by former bitcoin developers.
Ripple holds the promise not just of a new currency, but also of a novel method to send money around the world.
The company has attracted $3.5 million in financing. Among the investors is Pantera Capital, which includes money from executives at the Fortress Investment Group. Chris Larsen, the co-founder of Ripple Labs, said the company had also been talking with banks large and small about joining Ripple’s payment network.
“There’s a lot of interest from the big banks in what’s going on here,” said Mr. Larsen . “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
The price of an individual bitcoin recently stood around $260, near a record high.
Still, the entire world of virtual currencies could be rendered irrelevant almost overnight if law enforcement agencies decided to crack down on transactions. Several American state and federal authorities have said that they are looking at how to police the market, worried that the anonymous nature of the online transactions makes the currencies attractive for criminals.
Even without such legal hurdles, some critics expect that virtual currencies will eventually come to be seen as a speculative bubble with no foundation.
“It really does sound 21st century, but at the end of the day, do you really want to put your money at stake in that?” said Brian Riley, who covers payment systems for CEB TowerGroup, a financial services research firm in Arlington, Virginia.
Despite the questions, many have been drawn to the broader possibility that virtual currencies could allow money to zip around the world without going through banks and payment processors, with all the fees they impose, not to mention onerous government regulations.
One set of competitors are the so-called centralized currencies, which are operated and overseen from a single hub. These work like the loyalty points distributed and overseen by airlines or retailers and can allow regulators to keep a closer eye on transactions. One such currency, known as ven, is tied to a basket of global currencies that keeps the price stable.
But most online entrepreneurs say centralized currencies give too much power to the companies that run them. Prosecutors in Manhattan have said that one centralized currency service, Liberty Reserve, was devised solely to evade government authorities.
Decentralized currencies have computer code that is usually available for editing by any programmer. This means that no central authority can determine fees, or who can have access.
One of the most popular decentralized currencies is litecoin, which was founded by a former Google programmer and intended to improve on some of the flaws in bitcoin, like the somewhat slow transaction times.
Ripple has introduced significant innovations, including a system on which any currency, even bitcoin, can be moved around or traded. A person using the system can deposit any sort of money into a personal Ripple wallet through a business that is signed up as a Ripple gateway. That money can then be moved to the wallet of another Ripple user .
People moving the same type of currency, say dollars or pounds, to another account on the Ripple system will not have to use its currency, known as ripple or xrp . But the hope is that once people begin using ripple they will keep some of their money in the currency and eventually use it directly to make purchases.
As with bitcoin, a finite number of ripple will be created — 100 billion. Ripple Labs will distribute 55 percent of those free to encourage people and companies to use the system. The 7.5 billion ripple that have been released are worth about $60 million.
Angela Angelovska Wilson, a lawyer specializing in alternative payment systems, said Ripple’s more centralized control had let it benefit from some of the bad press around bitcoin, while maintaining the benefits of a decentralized currency.
“Obviously bitcoin was the first mover,” Ms. Wilson said. “But Ripple was right behind it. And then there are a lot of others coming through.”
中譯
如果現金是國王，等著繼位的太子可能就是虛擬現金。
世界各地程式設計師正大量推出新數位貨幣，欲以改善目前在網上風行但頗有爭議的比特幣概念。
現在有數十個構想在市場競逐，根據追蹤虛擬貨幣的網站coinmarketcap.com的最新統計，市場上有36種所謂密碼貨幣，像是bitbar、freicoin及cryptogenic bullion，每個月都還有新幣進場。
但許多圈內人都把「瑞波幣」視為最有機會取代比特幣的線上支付系統，它是由比特幣的前開發商在舊金山創立。
瑞波幣未來可望不只是種新貨幣，還是在全球移轉資金的新方法。
這家公司現已籌資350萬美元，投資者之一是潘特拉資本公司，其投資款項包括堡壘投資集團幾名經理人的資金。瑞波實驗室共同創辦人拉森說，該公司也與大大小小的幾家銀行談過，請他們加入瑞波幣支付網。拉森說：「幾家大銀行對於我們的業務很感興趣，這種事我過去未曾見過。」
比特幣的價格最近約是260美元（約台幣7650元），接近歷史高點。（譯注：比特幣近日瘋漲，11/19最高達900美元以上，最低500多美元）
可是如果執法機構決定取締這種交易，整個虛擬貨幣世界可能一夕瓦解。美國幾個州和聯邦當局都表示，擔心線上交易的匿名性質會使不法之徒受到這類貨幣吸引，正研究如何管理這個市場。
有些批評者認為，就算沒有法律障礙，虛擬貨幣最終也會被視為無實質基礎的投機泡沫。
維吉尼亞州阿靈頓市金融服務研究公司CEB TowerGroup專研支付系統的瑞里說：「這種系統聽起來的確當道，但考慮清楚後，你真想把錢投資在這上面嗎？」
儘管有那些質疑，讓許多人深受吸引的卻是：虛擬貨幣不經過銀行、不進入支付程序即可把錢轉到世界各地，可避掉手續費，更別說政府繁瑣的規範了。
有一組競爭者是所謂中央化（集中式）貨幣，由單一中心經營監督，流通就跟航空公司或零售商配發及管理的積點類似，交易可讓管理者嚴密監管。稱為Ven的一種這類貨幣盯住一籃子全球貨幣以維持價格穩定。
但多數網路創業家說，中央化貨幣給予貨幣管理公司太大權力。曼哈坦檢察官曾說，像「自由儲備」這種中央化貨幣服務公司，是專門設計來逃避政府管制的。
去中央化（分散式）貨幣有電腦程式碼，通常可由任何一位程式設計師編輯，這表示並無中央機構決定費用及誰可接觸這種貨幣。
最受歡迎的去中央化貨幣之一是litecoin，由一名谷歌前程式設計師所創，意在改善比特幣的缺點，如交易不夠快。
瑞波幣重大創新不少，包括一套可移轉或交易各種貨幣的系統，包括比特幣。使用者可透過簽約成為瑞波入口的公司，把任何貨幣放進個人瑞波錢包，然後錢可轉入另一瑞波幣使用者的錢包。
同一貨幣（如美元或英鎊）在不同瑞波幣帳戶間移轉，無需使用瑞波幣或新瑞波幣。但這套系統是希望人們一旦開始使用瑞波幣，就繼續持有部分瑞波幣，最後直接以瑞波幣購物。
瑞波幣跟比特幣一樣，會發行一定的數量──1000億個。瑞波實驗室將免費發送55%以鼓勵個人及企業使用此系統。已釋出的75億個瑞波幣約值6000萬美元。
專長是另類支付系統的律師安琪拉．威爾森說，瑞波幣比較中央化的管制使它因比特幣的部分負面新聞而受惠，同時又能保有非中央控制貨幣的好處。
威爾森說：「顯然比特幣是先行者，但瑞波幣緊追在後
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