Randal K. Quarles, a Trump administration appointee to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Vice Chair for bank supervision, has given a lengthy speech (“Thoughts on Prudent Innovation in the Payment System”) that directly targets Bitcoin as a danger to the monetary and financial system.

To reiterate, an official speaking for the nation’s central bank that manages the global reserve currency – the institution that has long bragged about its power to bail out the entire world with the magic powers of the alchemist – has put down Bitcoin for being untrustworthy, unbacked, and unsound.

The timing here seems about right. Nine years ago, Bitcoin was born, but only a small group of developers were really paying attention. Today, there are lines forming at Bitcoin ATMs around the country as people scramble to convert cash to digital money even at absurdly high premiums.

聯準會乃是美國的中央銀行，負責掌管美金這個全球儲備貨幣，而且一直以來都吹噓自己有煉金術，能夠對對全世界各國進行紓困。結果聯準會官員跑出來批評比特幣沒信用、無擔保、不穩健。

With one unit of Bitcoin now worth 10,000 times the US dollar, it makes sense that the Fed would begin to feel a bit defensive. Indeed, the speech comes to the defense of the central bank, the existing money, and payment system networks, and calls for the pace of innovation to be controlled by regulators in the interest of “prudence.”

現在一枚比特幣價值超過一萬美元，聯準會有疑慮實屬常情。本演講就旨在支持中央銀行、現行貨幣、以及支付系統網絡，並且呼籲當局要謹慎管制創新的速度，避新過快過火。

The “currency” or asset at the center of some of these systems is not backed by other secure assets, has no intrinsic value, is not the liability of a regulated banking institution, and in leading cases, is not the liability of any institution at all. Indeed, how to treat and define this new asset is complicated.

That a Fed official would denounce cryptocurrency as unbacked strikes me as the height of irony. The dollar was once “backed” by the secure asset of gold, but that system was finally abolished by Richard Nixon’s Fed in 1971, lighting up inflationary fires that lasted a full decade. Since then, the banking system has moved from crisis to crisis, from the S&L debacle of the late 1980s to the near-death experience of the entire financial system of 2008.

聯準會官員批評虛擬貨幣缺乏擔保，真的非常諷刺。美元原本是由黃金作為擔保，但聯準會於1971年尼克森任內廢除了金本位制度，此後通貨膨脹可說是一飛沖天，而且整個銀行體系爆發一次又一次的危機，包含了80年代的儲貸危機、2008年的經濟大衰退等等。