数字经济之父TED演讲：区块链将如何彻底改变我们的经济？（附视频&演讲稿）

Posted 2021-03-29 精彩英语演讲

英语演讲君按

在经历了数周的监管不确定性和科技公司的广告打压下，比特币周一(3月26日)下跌约7%，跌至8000美元以下。Coinbase的数据显示，今年迄今为止，该指数已累计下跌逾42%，已跌破1.3万美元的大关。 推特(Twitter)周一宣布，将禁止为加密货币做广告，此前谷歌和脸书(Facebook)也曾采取类似禁令，以打击首次投币的欺诈行为。

这也让今年以来备受关注的区块链成为人们关注的焦点，特别是在加密货币经历近日的“混乱时期”之后，受到了各方的极大关注与重视。全球的各大巨头资本都正在加速区块链领域的布局。 

今年年初，脸书（Facebook）创始人扎克伯格日前公布了其2018年的年度目标。他将探索区块链技与术在脸书中的应用，通过“去中心化”的方式向人们赋权。数字经济之父Don Tapscott在TED的演讲中也认为区块链将改变世界，建立信任的科技变得简明易懂。他表示这就是第二代互联网，将有可能改变我们的金钱、贸易、社会，而当下最火的比特币的底层技术：区块链，将会改变整个世界？

未来几十年影响最大的科技已经出现！！不过它并不是社交媒体或大数据，甚至不是人工智能，而是比特币等数字货币的底层技术— 区块链。

区块链将如何改变金钱与贸易 来自精彩英语演讲 00:00 18:43

如果说蒸汽机释放了生产力，电力解决了人们基本的生活需求，互联网彻底改变了信息传递的方式，那么区块链作为一个分布式公共账本，将可能改变整个人类社会价值传递的方式。

《区块链将如何改变我们的钱和商业》演讲稿双语版

The technology likely to have the greatest impact on the next few decades has arrived. And it's not social media. It's not big data. It's not robotics. It's not even AI. You'll be surprised to learn that it's the underlying technology of digital currencies like Bitcoin. It's called the blockchain. Blockchain.

Now, it's not the most sonorous word in the world, but I believe that this is now the next generation of the internet, and that it holds vast promise for every business, every society and for all of you, individually.

You know, for the past few decades, we've had the internet of information. And when I send you an email or a PowerPoint file or something, I'm actually not sending you the original, I'm sending you a copy. And that's great. This is democratized information. But when it comes to assets -- things like money, financial assets like stocks and bonds, loyalty points, intellectual property, music, art, a vote,carbon credit and other assets -- sending you a copy is a really bad idea. If I send you 100 dollars, it's really important that I don't still have the money --

and that I can't send it to you. This has been called the "double-spend" problem by cryptographers for a long time.

So today, we rely entirely on big intermediaries -- middlemen like banks, government, big social media companies, credit card companies and so on -- to establish trust in our economy. And these intermediaries perform all the business and transaction logic of every kind of commerce, from authentication, identification of people, through to clearing, settling and record keeping. And overall, they do a pretty good job. But there are growing problems.

To begin, they're centralized. That means they can be hacked, and increasingly are -- JP Morgan, the US Federal Government, LinkedIn, Home Depot and others found that out the hard way. They exclude billions of people from the global economy, for example, people who don't have enough money to have a bank account. They slow things down. It can take a second for an email to go around the world, but it can take days or weeks for money to move through the banking system across a city. And they take a big piece of the action -- 10 to 20 percent just to send money to another country. They capture our data, and that means we can't monetize it or use it to better manage our lives. Our privacy is being undermined. And the biggest problem is that overall, they've appropriated the largesse of the digital age asymmetrically: we have wealth creation, but we have growing social inequality.

So what if there were not only an internet of information, what if there were an internet of value --some kind of vast, global, distributed ledger running on millions of computers and available to everybody. And where every kind of asset, from money to music, could be stored, moved, transacted, exchanged and managed, all without powerful intermediaries? What if there were a native medium for value?

Well, in 2008, the financial industry crashed and, perhaps propitiously, an anonymous person or persons named Satoshi Nakamoto created a paper where he developed a protocol for a digital cashthat used an underlying cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. And this cryptocurrency enabled people to establish trust and do transactions without a third party. And this seemingly simple act set off a sparkthat ignited the world, that has everyone excited or terrified or otherwise interested in many places.Now, don't be confused about Bitcoin -- Bitcoin is an asset; it goes up and down, and that should be of interest to you if you're a speculator. More broadly, it's a cryptocurrency. It's not a fiat currency controlled by a nation-state. And that's of greater interest. But the real pony here is the underlying technology. It's called blockchain.

So for the first time now in human history, people everywhere can trust each other and transact peer to peer. And trust is established, not by some big institution, but by collaboration, by cryptography and by some clever code. And because trust is native to the technology, I call this, "The Trust Protocol."

Now, you're probably wondering: How does this thing work? Fair enough. Assets -- digital assets like money to music and everything in between -- are not stored in a central place, but they're distributed across a global ledger, using the highest level of cryptography. And when a transaction is conducted,it's posted globally, across millions and millions of computers. And out there, around the world, is a group of people called "miners." These are not young people, they're Bitcoin miners. They have massive computing power at their fingertips -- 10 to 100 times bigger than all of Google worldwide.These miners do a lot of work. And every 10 minutes, kind of like the heartbeat of a network, a block gets created that has all the transactions from the previous 10 minutes. Then the miners get to work, trying to solve some tough problems.

And they compete: the first miner to find out the truth and to validate the block, is rewarded in digital currency, in the case of the Bitcoin blockchain, with Bitcoin. And then -- this is the key part -- that block is linked to the previous block and the previous block to create a chain of blocks. And every one is time-stamped, kind of like with a digital waxed seal. So if I wanted to go and hack a block and, say, pay you and you with the same money, I'd have to hack that block, plus all the preceding blocks, the entire history of commerce on that blockchain, not just on one computer but across millions of computers, simultaneously, all using the highest levels of encryption, in the light of the most powerful computing resource in the world that's watching me. Tough to do. This is infinitely more secure than the computer systems that we have today. Blockchain. That's how it works.

So the Bitcoin blockchain is just one. There are many. The Ethereum blockchain was developed by a Canadian named Vitalik Buterin. He's [22] years old, and this blockchain has some extraordinary capabilities. One of them is that you can build smart contracts. It's kind of what it sounds like. It's a contract that self-executes, and the contract handles the enforcement, the management, performance and payment -- the contract kind of has a bank account, too, in a sense -- of agreements between people. And today, on the Ethereum blockchain, there are projects underway to do everything from create a new replacement for the stock market to create a new model of democracy, where politicians are accountable to citizens.

So to understand what a radical change this is going to bring, let's look at one industry, financial services. Recognize this? Rube Goldberg machine. It's a ridiculously complicated machine that does something really simple, like crack an egg or shut a door. Well, it kind of reminds me of the financial services industry, honestly. I mean, you tap your card in the corner store, and a bitstream goes through a dozen companies, each with their own computer system, some of them being 1970s mainframesolder than many of the people in this room, and three days later, a settlement occurs. Well, with a blockchain financial industry, there would be no settlement, because the payment and the settlement is the same activity, it's just a change in the ledger. So Wall Street and all around the world, the financial industry is in a big upheaval about this, wondering, can we be replaced, or how do we embrace this technology for success?

Now, why should you care? Well, let me describe some applications. Prosperity. The first era of the internet, the internet of information, brought us wealth but not shared prosperity, because social inequality is growing. And this is at the heart of all of the anger and extremism and protectionism and xenophobia and worse that we're seeing growing in the world today, Brexit being the most recent case.

So could we develop some new approaches to this problem of inequality? Because the only approach today is to redistribute wealth, tax people and spread it around more. Could we pre-distribute wealth? Could we change the way that wealth gets created in the first place by democratizing wealth creation, engaging more people in the economy, and then ensuring that they got fair compensation? Let me describe five ways that this can be done.

Number one: Did you know that 70 percent of the people in the world who have land have a tenuous title to it? So, you've got a little farm in Honduras, some dictator comes to power, he says, "I know you've got a piece of paper that says you own your farm, but the government computer says my friend owns your farm." This happened on a mass scale in Honduras, and this problem exists everywhere. Hernando de Soto, the great Latin American economist, says this is the number one issue in the world in terms of economic mobility, more important than having a bank account,because if you don't have a valid title to your land, you can't borrow against it, and you can't plan for the future.

So today, companies are working with governments to put land titles on a blockchain. And once it's there, this is immutable. You can't hack it. This creates the conditions for prosperity for potentially billions of people.

Secondly: a lot of writers talk about Uber and Airbnb and TaskRabbit and Lyft and so on as part of the sharing economy. This is a very powerful idea, that peers can come together and create and share wealth. My view is that ... these companies are not really sharing. In fact, they're successful precisely because they don't share. They aggregate services together, and they sell them. What if, rather than Airbnb being a $25 billion corporation, there was a distributed application on a blockchain, we'll call it B-Airbnb, and it was essentially owned by all of the people who have a room to rent. And when someone wants to rent a room, they go onto the blockchain database and all the criteria, they sift through, it helps them find the right room, and then the blockchain helps with the contracting, it identifies the party, it handles the payments just through digital payments -- they're built into the system. And it even handles reputation, because if she rates a room as a five-star room, that room is there, and it's rated, and it's immutable. So, the big sharing-economy disruptors in Silicon Valleycould be disrupted, and this would be good for prosperity.

Number three: the biggest flow of funds from the developed world to the developing world is not corporate investment, and it's not even foreign aid. It's remittances. This is the global diaspora;people have left their ancestral lands, and they're sending money back to their families at home. This is 600 billion dollars a year, and it's growing, and these people are getting ripped off.

Analie Domingo is a housekeeper. She lives in Toronto, and every month she goes to the Western Union office with some cash to send her remittances to her mom in Manila. It costs her around 10 percent; the money takes four to seven days to get there; her mom never knows when it's going to arrive. It takes five hours out of her week to do this.

Six months ago, Analie Domingo used a blockchain application called Abra. And from her mobile device, she sent 300 bucks. It went directly to her mom's mobile device without going through an intermediary. And then her mom looked at her mobile device -- it's kind of like an Uber interface, there's Abra "tellers" moving around. She clicks on a teller that's a five-star teller, who's seven minutes away. The guy shows up at the door, gives her Filipino pesos, she puts them in her wallet. The whole thing took minutes, and it cost her two percent. This is a big opportunity for prosperity.

Number four: the most powerful asset of the digital age is data. And data is really a new asset class,maybe bigger than previous asset classes, like land under the agrarian economy, or an industrial plant, or even money. And all of you -- we -- create this data. We create this asset, and we leave this trail of digital crumbs behind us as we go throughout life. And these crumbs are collected into a mirror image of you, the virtual you. And the virtual you may know more about you than you do, because you can't remember what you bought a year ago, or said a year ago, or your exact location a year ago.And the virtual you is not owned by you -- that's the big problem.

So today, there are companies working to create an identity in a black box, the virtual you owned by you. And this black box moves around with you as you travel throughout the world, and it's very, very stingy. It only gives away the shred of information that's required to do something. A lot of transactions, the seller doesn't even need to know who you are. They just need to know that they got paid.

And then this avatar is sweeping up all of this data and enabling you to monetize it. And this is a wonderful thing, because it can also help us protect our privacy, and privacy is the foundation of a free society. Let's get this asset that we create back under our control, where we can own our own identity and manage it responsibly.

Finally --

Finally, number five: there are a whole number of creators of content who don't receive fair compensation, because the system for intellectual property is broken. It was broken by the first era of the internet. Take music. Musicians are left with crumbs at the end of the whole food chain. You know, if you were a songwriter, 25 years ago, you wrote a hit song, it got a million singles, you could get royalties of around 45,000 dollars. Today, you're a songwriter, you write a hit song, it gets a million streams, you don't get 45k, you get 36 dollars, enough to buy a nice pizza.

So Imogen Heap, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, is now putting music on a blockchain ecosystem. She calls it "Mycelia." And the music has a smart contract surrounding it. And the music protects her intellectual property rights. You want to listen to the song? It's free, or maybe a few micro-cents that flow into a digital account. You want to put the song in your movie, that's different,and the IP rights are all specified. You want to make a ringtone? That's different. She describes that the song becomes a business. It's out there on this platform marketing itself, protecting the rights of the author, and because the song has a payment system in the sense of bank account, all the money flows back to the artist, and they control the industry, rather than these powerful intermediaries. Now, this is --

This is not just songwriters, it's any creator of content, like art, like inventions, scientific discoveries, journalists. There are all kinds of people who don't get fair compensation, and with blockchains,they're going to be able to make it rain on the blockchain. And that's a wonderful thing.

So, these are five opportunities out of a dozen to solve one problem, prosperity, which is one of countless problems that blockchains are applicable to.

Now, technology doesn't create prosperity, of course -- people do. But my case to you is that, once again, the technology genie has escaped from the bottle, and it was summoned by an unknown person or persons at this uncertain time in human history, and it's giving us another kick at the can,another opportunity to rewrite the economic power grid and the old order of things, and solve some of the world's most difficult problems, if we will it.

Thank you.

有可能在未来几十年 带来巨大影响的科技， 已经到来了。 并不是社交媒体， 也不是大数据， 也不是机器人科学， 甚至也不是人工智能。 你会惊讶地了解到， 它是比特币等数字货币的技术基础， 它叫做区块链。

它不是世界上最华丽的词汇， 但是我坚信 它将是下一代互联网， 并且给每一次贸易， 每一个社会，每一个人， 带来光明前景。

过去的几十年里， 我们迎来了互联网的信息时代。 当我向你发送一封电子邮件， 或一份PPT文件或者其他的时候， 实际上我发送的并不是原始文件， 我发送的是拷贝的副本。 那可真棒。 这是民主化的信息时代。 但是如果牵涉到资产的话， 比如说金钱， 股票及债权等金融资产， 股份，知识产权， 音乐，艺术，一张选票， 碳信用额等其他资产， 发送一份副本真是个糟糕主意。 如果我给了你100美元， 我不再拥有这笔钱是很重要的。

并且我不能再次发送。 这已经被密码专家叫做 “二次消费”问题 很久了。

如今，我们完全依赖于大型中介机构， 中间商比如银行，政府， 大型社交媒体公司， 信用卡公司等等， 来构建经济中的信用体系。 这些中介机构承办了 各式各样的商业贸易 的一切流程。 从对人们的身份验证， 到记录的清除，设定和保存。 总的来说，他们做得不错。 但是有一个问题日益凸显。

首先，他们过于集中， 这就意味着它们会被黑客攻击， 像摩根大通银行，美联储， 领英，家得宝等 惨痛的教训证明了这一点。 它们使数十亿人民与全球经济隔绝， 比方说，有人由于没有足够的资金 无法开户。 它们降低了效率。 一封电子邮件转瞬即可环游世界， 但是会花上几天甚至几周的时间 通过银行移动城市内的金钱， 它们从中收取大笔利益： 跨国转账需要10%到20%的手续费。 他们掌握了我们的交易数据， 这意味着我们不能将其货币化 或是更好地管理我们的生活。 我们的隐私正在暗中被侵蚀。而最大的问题在于， 他们使得数字时代带给人们 的福利变得不再平衡。 我们创造着财富， 但是我们的社会也日趋不平等。

如果我们有的不仅仅是信息的互联， 如果还有价值的互联： 大量的，全球性的 分散式的账本， 可以在数千万台电脑上运转， 每个人都有权访问。 无论是什么样的资产， 从金钱到音乐， 都可以进行储存，移动， 交易，交换和管理， 全部不经过强大的中间商。 如果我们有价值的当地媒介？

在2008年，金融业崩溃， 也许幸运的是， 一位或几位名叫中本聪的匿名人士 创造了一个针对数字货币的协议， 使用了一种加密货币，名为比特币。 这一加密货币使得人们可以 建立信任并进行交易， 不需要第三方。 这看似寻常的动作擦出的火花， 点燃了整个世界， 各地的人们或是激动，或是恐慌， 或是好奇。 现在不必为比特币感到困惑。 比特币是一种资产，它有涨有跌。 投机商应该对此颇有兴趣。 总的来说，它是一种加密货币。 它不是由国家控制的法定货币。 这就很有趣了。 不过其中最根本的要素是叫做区位链的技术。

这是人类历史上首次 各地的人们可以彼此信任， 并进行点对点的交易。 信任的建立并不是基于一些大型机构， 而是基于合作，基于密码技术 和一些精巧的代码。 因为信任正是起源于这一技术。 我把它叫做“信任协议”。

你也许会想： 它的工作原理是什么？ 问得好。 资产——数字资产从金钱到音乐， 或是其他的产品， 并不储存在中央区域， 而是分散于全球的账本之中， 使用最高级别的密码技术。 当一次交易处理完成后， 它会通过数亿台计算机 发布全球通告。 而在全世界， 有一群叫做“矿工”的人们。 他们并不一定是年轻人， 他们是比特币矿工。 他们手头有着巨大的计算能力—— 比谷歌全球规大数十倍。 这些矿工要做很多工作。 每隔十分钟， 有点类似于网络的一次心跳， 一个区块便诞生了， 它包含了过去10分钟的所有交易信息。 然后矿工们开始工作， 尝试解决一些难题。

他们彼此竞争， 第一个找出真相并使区块有效的矿工 将会有数字货币的奖励， 这就是关于比特币的区块链。 随后是关键的部分， 该区块连接到前一个区块， 以及更前面的区块 形成了一连串的区块。 每一个区块都是时间标记， 有点像是数字蜡印。 假如说我想要破解其中的一个区块， 比方说给你还有你一样的金钱， 我需要破解那个区块， 和前面所有的区块， 就是那区块链上完整的交易历史， 并不只是破解一台电脑， 而是要同时破解数亿台电脑， 它们都使用着最高级别的加密技术， 世界上最强大的计算资源 正在监视着我。 几乎不可能的任务。 比起我们现有的计算机系统， 这绝对要安全得多。 区块链，这就是它工作的原理。

而比特币的区块链只是其中之一。 还有许多种类。 以太坊区块链由加拿大人维塔利·布塔林开发。 他只有19岁。 （实际年龄应为22岁） 这一区块链有一些无与伦比的特点。 其中之一是你可以制定智能合约。 它正如其名。 它是自我执行的合约， 合约负责处理强制措施，经营管理， 工作情况和支付方式，某种意义上来说，该合约也有一个银行账户， 是关于人们之间的协议。 如今，通过以太坊的区块链，有各种工程进行着各种任务， 从创造新的股票市场的替代品， 到创立一个政客对公民真正负责的 民主制度的新模型。

所以为了理解 即将到来的突破性的改变， 让我们看一个行业： 金融服务业。 你们能否认出这是什么？小题大做的机器。 这台机器离奇地复杂， 工作却很简单， 像是敲碎鸡蛋或是关上门等。 老实说，它使我想起了金融服务业。 我的意思是，你在街角的商店刷了卡， 一股比特流便穿过了好几家公司， 每一家都有自己的计算机系统， 其中还有一些20世纪70年代的主机， 甚至比在座的各位还要老， 然后三天过后， 一份交易说明诞生了。 好吧，金融业有了区块链， 将不再会有交易说明， 因为交易和交易说明是同一种行为， 它只是在账本中有所不同。 所以在华尔街或世界上所有地方， 金融业正在巨变， 思考着自己是否会被取代， 或是如何正视技术迎接成功？

现在为什么要在意呢？ 让我来讲述几个应用吧。 繁荣。 互联网的第一个时代， 信息的互联， 带给我们财富， 但是没有共享繁荣， 因为社会变得日趋不平等。 而这是所有的愤怒和极端主义的焦点， 还导致了贸易保护主义，仇外心理等 现在我们见到的现象。 英国脱欧就是最近的例子。

我们能否针对这不平等的问题 想出一些新的解决方案？ 因为现在唯一的方法就是 财富的再分配， 征税来减小贫富差距。 我们能否对财富进行预先分配？ 我们能否从源头上改变财富的创造方式， 通过民主化来进行财富创造， 吸引更多的人参与经济， 并确保他们得到平等的报酬？ 我将有五点使其可行的方案。

第一点： 你们知道世界上70%的土地所有者 只是拥有一个脆弱的名头？ 你在洪都拉斯有个小农场， 当独裁者上台， 他说：“我知道你有一张纸 证明你拥有你的农场， 但是政府的计算机显示 我的朋友拥有你的农场。“ 这种事在洪都拉斯屡见不鲜， 而这一问题也非常普遍。 伟大的拉丁美洲经济学家 埃尔南多·德·索托， 把它列为经济流动性方面 世界头号问题， 比起拥有一个银行账户更重要。 因为倘若你对你的土地 没有有效的所有权， 你就无法用它来借贷， 你就无法计划于未来。

所以现在，公司正在与政府合作 将土地所有权置于区块链中。 一旦放置完成，它将不再改变。 你不能破解它。 这样就为数亿人的繁荣 创造了可能的条件。

第二点： 很多写手谈论起Uber Airbnb，TaskRabbit，Lyft等企业时， 把他们当做了共享经济的一部分。这个想法很不错， 个人也可以汇聚在一起 创造并共享财富。 我的观点是 这些公司并没有真正的共享。实际上，他们的成功恰恰 是因为他们不共享。 他们把服务汇集并加以出售。 假如说Airbnb并不是 那家250亿美元的公司 在区块链上有一个分布式的应用， 我们叫它B-Airbnb， 它从根本上属于 所有提供房间出租的人们。 当有人想租借一间房间， 他们进入区块链的数据库和标准库， 他们细细筛选， 帮助他们找到合适的房间， 随后区块链帮助签订合约。 鉴定当事人， 通过数字支付 解决支付问题， 这是系统内置的支付方式。 它甚至处理声誉问题， 如果她给一间房间五星好评， 那么房间本身 和评价都已不可更改。 所以硅谷共享制经济 的破坏者将不复存在。 这将有利于经济繁荣。

第三点： 从发达国家到发展中国家 规模最大的资金流动 并不是公司投资， 甚至也不是外国援助， 而是汇款。 这是散居在全球的人们， 离开了祖辈的土地， 他们把钱汇回家中。 一年会产生6000亿美元的汇款， 而且还在不断增加。 而且他们正在被剥削。

安娜丽·多明戈是位女管家。 她在多伦多生活， 每个月都会带着现金 来到西联汇款公司 把钱汇给在马尼拉的妈妈。 手续费占了将近10%， 转账手续需要花费4到7天的时间， 她妈妈从来不知道到账的时间。每个礼拜她都要花五个小时来 检查是否到账。

六个月前， 安娜丽·多明戈使用了一款 名叫阿布拉的区块链应用。 她从自己的手机上 转出了300美元。直接转入了她母亲的手机上 并没有经过中间商。 她的母亲只需查看她的手机 有点像Uber的应用界面， 阿布拉中有”出纳员“在循环滚动。 她点击一个五星的出纳员， 只相隔7分钟的路程。 那位伙计很快出现在门口， 给了她菲律宾比索， 随后把钱放进钱包。 整个过程只需要几分钟时间， 并且花费只有2%。这是经济繁荣的巨大机遇。

第四点：数字时代 最强大的资产就是数据。 数据是一种新的资产种类， 也许比以前的资产种类更庞大， 就像农业经济下的土地， 或是工厂， 甚至是金钱。 是我们所有人，创造了这些数据。 我们创造了这种资产， 在我们的数字生活中， 留下了零碎的痕迹。 这些痕迹汇聚成了你的镜像， 一个虚拟的你。虚拟的你也许比你还要了解你， 因为你并不一定记得一年前买了什么， 或是说了什么， 或者你一年前的准确位置。 而虚拟的你并不属于你， 那可是个大问题。

所以现在有许多公司正致力于 开发一个黑盒中的身份系统， 属于你自己的虚拟的你。 这个黑盒会随着你移动， 前往世界的每一个角落。 它对你的隐私守口如瓶。 它只会根据需要 透露一丁点的信息。 有许多的交易， 卖家甚至不需要知道你是谁。 他们只要知道能拿到钱。

于是这化身清除了所有数据 使你能够进行货币化。 这可真棒， 因为它也能保护我们的隐私， 而隐私是自由社会的基础。 让我们重新夺回我们创造的 这一资产的控制权。 我们拥有我们自己的身份 并且进行负责的管理。

最后，第五点： 有许多内容的创造者 并没有得到公平的报酬， 因为知识产权系统遭到了损害。 在互联网的第一个时代就遭到损害。 就拿音乐来说。 音乐家们只在食物链的 末端获得一些残渣碎屑。 在25年前，如果你是一个作曲家， 写出一首流行的歌曲， 卖出一百万首单曲， 你可以获得大约45000美元的报酬。 而现在，作曲家的你 写出一首流行的歌曲， 被百万次播放， 你并不能得到45000美元， 你只能得到36美元， 足以买一个不错的披萨了。

所以伊莫金·希普， 一位荣获格莱美奖的创作歌手， 现在把音乐发表在一个 区块链的生态系统上。 她称其为”菌丝“。 其中的音乐有着智能协议。 音乐保护着她的知识产权。 你想要听歌吗？ 它是免费的，或者会有 几分钱流入数字账户。 如果想要在电影中使用这首歌， 那就是另一回事了。 知识产权都有详细说明。 你想要作为手机铃声？ 那也是另一码事。 她描述道，歌曲成为了商业。 在这个平台上歌曲实现了商业化， 保护了作者的权利。 并且因为歌曲采用了一种 类似于银行账户的支付系统， 所有的钱都会到艺术家的手中， 他们掌控了行业， 而不是由那些强大的中间商所控制。 

现在不仅仅是歌曲作家， 任何形式的创作活动， 比如美术， 比如发明， 科学发现，新闻记者。 各行各业的没有得到公平报酬的人， 而有了区块链， 他们将在区块链上得到滋润。 那样可真棒。

这只是十几种机遇中的5种， 来解决一个问题：繁荣。 区块链可以应用于无数问题， 它只是其中之一。

当然，科技不创造繁荣， 而是由人创造。 但是我只是再次表示， 科技的精灵已从瓶中逃出， 受到一位或几位不知名的人士召唤 在人类历史上这个不确定的阶段， 它给了我们一次尝试， 另一个改写经济权利网络 和旧秩序的机会 并且只要我们愿意， 可以解决一些世界上最麻烦的问题。

谢谢。

《区块链如何彻底改变经济》演讲稿双语版

Economists have been exploring people's behavior for hundreds of years: how we make decisions,how we act individually and in groups, how we exchange value. They've studied the institutions that facilitate our trade, like legal systems, corporations, marketplaces. But there is a new, technological institution that will fundamentally change how we exchange value, and it's called the blockchain.

Now, that's a pretty bold statement, but if you take nothing else away from this talk, I actually want you to remember that while blockchain technology is relatively new, it's also a continuation of a very human story, and the story is this. As humans, we find ways to lower uncertainty about one another so that we can exchange value.

Now, one of the first people to really explore the idea of institutions as a tool in economics to lower our uncertainties about one another and be able to do trade was the Nobel economist Douglass North. He passed away at the end of 2015, but North pioneered what's called "new institutional economics." And what he meant by institutions were really just formal rules like a constitution, and informal constraints, like bribery. These institutions are really the grease that allow our economic wheels to function, and we can see this play out over the course of human history.

If we think back to when we were hunter-gatherer economies, we really just traded within our village structure. We had some informal constraints in place, but we enforced all of our trade with violence or social repercussions. As our societies grew more complex and our trade routes grew more distant, we built up more formal institutions, institutions like banks for currency, governments, corporations.These institutions helped us manage our trade as the uncertainty and the complexity grew, and our personal control was much lower. Eventually with the internet, we put these same institutions online.We built platform marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, just faster institutions that act as middlemen to facilitate human economic activity.

As Douglass North saw it, institutions are a tool to lower uncertainty so that we can connect and exchange all kinds of value in society. And I believe we are now entering a further and radical evolution of how we interact and trade, because for the first time, we can lower uncertainty not just with political and economic institutions, like our banks, our corporations, our governments, but we can do it with technology alone.

So what is the blockchain? Blockchain technology is a decentralized database that stores a registry of assets and transactions across a peer-to-peer network. It's basically a public registry of who owns what and who transacts what. The transactions are secured through cryptography, and over time, that transaction history gets locked in blocks of data that are then cryptographically linked together and secured. This creates an immutable, unforgeable record of all of the transactions across this network.This record is replicated on every computer that uses the network.

It's not an app. It's not a company. I think it's closest in description to something like Wikipedia. We can see everything on Wikipedia. It's a composite view that's constantly changing and being updated. We can also track those changes over time on Wikipedia, and we can create our own wikis,because at their core, they're just a data infrastructure. On Wikipedia, it's an open platform that stores words and images and the changes to that data over time. On the blockchain, you can think of it as an open infrastructure that stores many kinds of assets. It stores the history of custodianship,ownership and location for assets like the digital currency Bitcoin, other digital assets like a title of ownership of IP. It could be a certificate, a contract, real world objects, even personal identifiable information. There are of course other technical details to the blockchain, but at its core, that's how it works. It's this public registry that stores transactions in a network and is replicated so that it's very secure and hard to tamper with.

Which brings me to my point of how blockchains lower uncertainty and how they therefore promise to transform our economic systems in radical ways. So uncertainty is kind of a big term in economics,but I want to go through three forms of it that we face in almost all of our everyday transactions,where blockchains can play a role. We face uncertainties like not knowing who we're dealing with, not having visibility into a transaction and not having recourse if things go wrong.

So let's take the first example, not knowing who we're dealing with. Say I want to buy a used smartphone on eBay. The first thing I'm going to do is look up who I'm buying from. Are they a power user? Do they have great reviews and ratings, or do they have no profile at all? Reviews, ratings, checkmarks: these are the attestations about our identities that we cobble together today and use to lower uncertainty about who we're dealing with. But the problem is they're very fragmented. Think about how many profiles you have. Blockchains allow for us to create an open, global platform on which to store any attestation about any individual from any source. This allows us to create a user-controlled portable identity. More than a profile, it means you can selectively reveal the different attributes about you that help facilitate trade or interaction, for instance that a government issued you an ID, or that you're over 21, by revealing the cryptographic proof that these details exist and are signed off on. Having this kind of portable identity around the physical world and the digital worldmeans we can do all kinds of human trade in a totally new way.

So I've talked about how blockchains could lower uncertainty in who we're dealing with. The second uncertainty that we often face is just not having transparency into our interactions. Say you're going to send me that smartphone by mail. I want some degree of transparency. I want to know that the product I bought is the same one that arrives in the mail and that there's some record for how it got to me. This is true not just for electronics like smartphones, but for many kinds of goods and data, things like medicine, luxury goods, any kind of data or product that we don't want tampered with.

The problem in many companies, especially those that produce something complicated like a smartphone, is they're managing all of these different vendors across a horizontal supply chain. All of these people that go into making a product, they don't have the same database. They don't use the same infrastructure, and so it becomes really hard to see transparently a product evolve over time.

Using the blockchain, we can create a shared reality across nontrusting entities. By this I mean all of these nodes in the network do not need to know each other or trust each other, because they each have the ability to monitor and validate the chain for themselves. Think back to Wikipedia. It's a shared database, and even though it has multiple readers and multiple writers at the same time, it has one single truth. So we can create that using blockchains. We can create a decentralized database that has the same efficiency of a monopoly without actually creating that central authority. So all of these vendors, all sorts of companies, can interact using the same database without trusting one another. It means for consumers, we can have a lot more transparency. As a real-world object travels along, we can see its digital certificate or token move on the blockchain, adding value as it goes. This is a whole new world in terms of our visibility.

So I've talked about how blockchains can lower our uncertainties about identity and how they change what we mean about transparency in long distances and complex trades, like in a supply chain. The last uncertainty that we often face is one of the most open-ended, and it's reneging. What if you don't send me the smartphone? Can I get my money back? Blockchains allow us to write code, binding contracts, between individuals and then guarantee that those contracts will bear out without a third party enforcer. So if we look at the smartphone example, you could think about escrow. You are financing that phone, but you don't need to release the funds until you can verify that all the conditions have been met. You got the phone.

I think this is one of the most exciting ways that blockchains lower our uncertainties, because it means to some degree we can collapse institutions and their enforcement. It means a lot of human economic activity can get collateralized and automated, and push a lot of human intervention to the edges, the places where information moves from the real world to the blockchain.

I think what would probably floor Douglass North about this use of technology is the fact that the very thing that makes it work, the very thing that keeps the blockchain secure and verified, is our mutual distrust. So rather than all of our uncertainties slowing us down and requiring institutions like banks, our governments, our corporations, we can actually harness all of that collective uncertainty and use it to collaborate and exchange more and faster and more open.

Now, I don't want you to get the impression that the blockchain is the solution to everything, even though the media has said that it's going to end world poverty, it's also going to solve the counterfeit drug problem and potentially save the rainforest. The truth is, this technology is in its infancy, and we're going to need to see a lot of experiments take place and probably fail before we truly understand all of the use cases for our economy. But there are tons of people working on this, from financial institutions to technology companies, start-ups and universities. And one of the reasons is that it's not just an economic evolution. It's also an innovation in computer science.

Blockchains give us the technological capability of creating a record of human exchange, of exchange of currency, of all kinds of digital and physical assets, even of our own personal attributes,in a totally new way. So in some ways, they become a technological institution that has a lot of the benefits of the traditional institutions we're used to using in society, but it does this in a decentralized way. It does this by converting a lot of our uncertainties into certainties.

So I think we need to start preparing ourselves, because we are about to face a world where distributed, autonomous institutions have quite a significant role.

Thank you.

Bruno Giussani: Thank you, Bettina. I think I understood that it's coming, it offers a lot of potential, and it's complex. What is your estimate for the rate of adoption?

Bettina Warburg: I think that's a really good question. My lab is pretty much focused on going the enterprise and government route first, because in reality, blockchain is a complex technology. How many of you actually understand how the internet works? But you use it every day, so I think we're sort of facing the same John Sculley idea of technology should either be invisible or beautiful, and blockchain is kind of neither of those things right now, so it's better suited for either really early adopters who kind of get it and can tinker around or for finding those best use cases like identity or asset tracking or smart contracts that can be used at that level of an enterprise or government.

BG: Thank you. Thanks for coming to TED.

BW: Thanks.

几百年来，经济学家一直在探索人们的行为：我们如何做决策、如何独立行动、如何分组、如何交换价值。他们研究了促进我们贸易的机构，如法律制度、公司和市场。但是，有一个新的技术机构将从根本上改变我们如何交换价值，这就是所谓的区块链。

现在---这个说法虽然非常大胆，但是---我想让你记住：尽管区块链技术相对较新，但它也是符合人性的。作为人类，我们不断找寻各种降低彼此不确定性的方法，以便我们能够交换价值。

诺贝尔经济学奖获得者道格拉斯·诺思（Douglass North），是第一批探索如何将制度作为经济工具来降低彼此间的不确定性、从而进行交易的人之一。他在2015年底去世了，但是他开创了所谓的“新制度经济学”。而他所谓的制度，其实就是像宪法那样的正式规则，以及贿赂等非正式约束。这些机构实际上是使我们的经济轮子发挥作用的油脂，在人类历史进程中，它们的作用得以发挥。

如果回想一下，当我们处在狩猎-采集经济体时，我们真的只是在我们的村庄内交易。我们有一些非正式的制约因素，但是我们用暴力或社会反响来强制我们所有的贸易。

随着我们的社会变得越来越复杂、贸易路线越来越远，我们建立了更为正规的机构，比如，货币银行、政府、企业等机构。这些机构帮助我们管理我们的交易，因为不确定性和复杂性增加了，个人的控制力则降低很多。

最终，这些机构出现在互联网上。我们建立了像亚马逊、eBay、阿里巴巴这样的平台市场，这些反应更快的机构作为中间商来促进人类的经济活动。

正如道格拉斯·诺斯所说，制度是降低不确定性的工具，以便我们能够连接和交换社会中的各种价值。

而现在，我相信我们正在进行一场更深入彻底的革命---关于我们如何互动和交易。因为，我们第一次可以仅仅用技术就能降低不确定性，而不是用通过政治和经济机构，比如，银行、公司、政府。

那么区块链是什么？

区块链技术是一个分散的数据库，用以存储点对点（peer to peer）网络的资产和交易记录。它基本上相当于一个公共帐簿，记录了谁拥有什么、谁和谁交易了什么。交易是通过密码保护的。并且，随着时间的推移，交易历史被锁定在数据块中，然后以密码方式连接在一起并被保护。该网络的所有交易记录都不可改变、不可伪造，且这些记录将在每台使用网络的计算机上进行复制。

这不是一个应用程序，也不是一个公司。我认为目前最像它的东西可能是维基百科。我们可以在维基百科上看到一切---这是一个不断变化和更新的复合视图。我们也可以跟踪维基百科上的这些变化，我们可以创建自己的维基，因为在它们的内核链上，它们只是一个数据基础设施。

维基百科是一个开放的平台，可以存储单词、图片以及随时间变化的数据。在区块链上，你可以将其视为存储多种资产的开放式基础架构。它存储了包括数字货币比特币之类资产的资料，如，保管权、所有权、所在地等等变更的历史，以及其他数字资产，如知识产权所有权。它可以是证书、合同、真实世界的物体，甚至是个人可识别的信息。当然区块链还有其他技术细节，但其核心就是它的工作原理。这是公共账本，它将事务存储在网络中，并被复制，因此非常安全，很难被篡改。

那么，区块链如何降低不确定性，并以激进的方式改变我们的经济体系呢？

不确定性在经济学中是一个很大的术语，但是我想通过我们日常交易中遇到的不确定性的三种形式，来解释区块链是如何发挥作用的。

我们面临的不确定性通常包括：我们不知道在跟谁打交道，无法把握交易的可见性，以及，如果出现问题就没有追索权。

让我们从第一个问题入手，来看一个例子。假设我想要在eBay上购买一个二手智能手机。我要做的第一件事就是查看卖家的资料。他们是高级用户吗？他们是否有很好的评论和评分？还是根本没有档案？评论，评分和标记：这些是我们身份的证明，我们现在拼凑在一起，用来降低我们处理人与人之间的不确定性。但问题是他们非常分散---想想你有多少份资料。

现在，区块链允许我们创建一个开放的全球平台。在这个平台上，可以存储任何来源的个人的任何证明。这使我们能够创建一个用户控制的便携式身份。这不仅仅是一个简介，它意味着你可以有选择地揭示你的不同属性，有助于促进贸易，例如政府发给你一个身份证，或者你已经超过21岁。在现实世界和数字世界中拥有这种便携式的身份，意味着我们可以以全新的方式进行各种各样的人类贸易。

我们经常面临的第二个不确定性是对我们的互动没有透明度。假设你要通过快递把这个手机发给我。我想要一定程度的透明度。我想知道，我买的产品和快递中的产品是一样的，而且有一些关于它的记录。这不仅适用于智能手机等电子产品，也适用于医药、奢侈品等任何我们不想篡改的数据或产品。

许多公司，尤其是那些像智能手机公司面临的问题是，他们在横向供应链上管理不同的供应商，但所有这些制作产品的人都没有相同的数据库，且他们不使用相同的基础设施。因此，很难看到产品的透明度。

而现在，通过区块链，我们可以在不信任的实体之间创建一个共享的现实。网络中的所有这些节点都不需要彼此了解或互相信任，因为它们都有能力自行监视和验证---就像维基百科：这是一个共享的数据库，即使它同时拥有多个阅读者和多个作者，也只有一个事实。

所以，我们可以使用区块链创建一个分散的数据库，它具有与垄断相同的效率，而不需要真正创建中央权威机构。因此，所有这些供应商---即使它们是各种各样的公司---也都可以使用相同的数据库进行交互，而不需要相互信任。这就意味着，我们消费者可以有更多的透明度。对于一个真实世界的物体，我们可以看到其数字证书或代币在区块链上移动，其价值也随之增加。

这是一个全新的世界。

最后一个不确定因素是最开放的，也是不可避免的：如果你不给发货怎么办？我可以拿回我的钱吗？区块链允许我们在个人与个人之间编写代码并产生具有约束力的合同，然后保证这些合同在没有第三方执行者的情况下被执行。所以，在这个智能手机的例子中，我可以将资金托管---我付钱买手机，但只有在拿到手机后，才会释放资金---就像一个去中心化的支付宝。

我认为这是区块链降低我们不确定性的最令人兴奋的方法之一，因为这意味着我们可以在一定程度上不需要机构和执法机构，意味着很多人类的经济活动可以得到抵押和自动化，并去掉了大量的人为干预，从现实世界走向区块链。

让区块链发挥维持安全和验证功能的根本原因，是我们相互之间不信任的事实。因此，我们不是把所有的不确定因素放缓，而是要求银行、政府和公司这样的机构，利用区块链来管理这些不确定性，并利用它来进行更多、更快、更开放的合作和交流。

现在，我不希望你们有这样的印象：区块链是解决所有问题的办法---尽管媒体已经表示要结束世界性的贫困，还要解决假药问题，并有可能拯救雨林。而事实是，这项技术还处于起步阶段，在我们真正了解经济的所有用处之前，我们将需要大量的实验，也可能会失败。但是，从金融机构到科技公司，从初创企业到大学，有很多人在做这方面的工作---其中一个原因就是：这不仅仅是一个经济的演变，也是计算机科学的一个创新。

区块链正以全新的方式，给我们提供并创造了一种人类交流、货币交换、各种数字和实物资产交换、甚至是我们个人属性记录的技术能力。所以，在某些方面，可以说，它将成为一个技术机构---它具有我们在社会上习惯使用的传统机构的许多好处，但是它是以去中心化方式进行的---通过将我们的许多不确定性转化为确定性来做到这一点。

所以，我认为我们需要开始做好自己的准备，因为我们即将面临一个全新的世界；而在这个世界中，去中心化、自治的机构发挥着相当重要的作用。

您的赞赏

是我们源源不断的动力

 点击阅读原文查看更多精彩英语演讲！