為什么比特幣投資者男性居多？

A decade older than my brother, I take some things for granted. I have a professional job, a degree, a credit card; he stays up later than me, knows the cool music and can travel for months at a time. So it came as a surprise to find that his investments were raking it in — because, unlike me, he has put money into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

比弟弟大十歲的我，覺得有些事情是理所當(dāng)然的。我有一份專業(yè)工作、學(xué)位、信用卡;他比我睡得晚，懂很酷的音樂，可以一次旅行幾個月。因此，發(fā)現(xiàn)他的投資賺了大錢讓我感到意外，因?yàn)樗也灰粯?，他把錢投進(jìn)了比特幣等加密數(shù)字貨幣。

Perhaps even more painful to admit, he encouraged me to buy bitcoin five years ago, when it was worth about $100, far below the $7,088 it is at the time of writing (or the almost $20,000 it was at its peak). It was an offer only a 17-year-old boy could propose: give me your money, I’ll invest it in bitcoin and give you a share of the proceeds. It turns out — even after the recent fall in bitcoin — it was an offer I was foolish to decline.

或許更令人痛苦的是承認(rèn)，5年前他曾鼓勵我購買比特幣，當(dāng)時比特幣價值約為100美元，遠(yuǎn)低于我寫這篇文章時的7088美元(或者它曾經(jīng)逼近的2萬美元峰值)。這是一個只有17歲男孩才會提出的提議：把你的錢交給我，我會用它投資比特幣，然后給你收益分成。事實(shí)證明，即使是在最近比特幣下跌之后，我那時拒絕這個提議仍是愚蠢的。

I am not alone. Ask most people outside Silicon Valley whether they own any bitcoin, and the answer will still probably be no.

愚蠢的還不止我一個人。問問硅谷以外的大多數(shù)人是否擁有比特幣?答案很可能是沒有。

So what do early adopters have in common? One factor is gender. As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum have soared over recent months, it is mainly men who have bought in.

那么，很早接納比特幣的人有何共同之處?一個因素是性別。最近幾個月，當(dāng)比特幣和以太坊(Ethereum)等加密數(shù)字貨幣的價格飆升時，買入者主要是男性。

Accurate data on who holds the anonymous currencies are hard to find, but Uphold, a virtual currency wallet service that does background checks on its users, says 75 per cent are men, while Coin Dance, which tracks statistics on the bitcoin community, found 97 per cent of engagement was from men. If men like my brother were riding high on returns, why weren’t women?

關(guān)于誰持有這類匿名貨幣的準(zhǔn)確數(shù)據(jù)很難找到，但對其用戶做過背景調(diào)查的虛擬貨幣錢包服務(wù)Uphold表示，75%的用戶是男性，而追蹤比特幣社區(qū)統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)的Coin Dance發(fā)現(xiàn)，97%的參與者是男性。如果像我弟弟那樣的男性獲得了高回報，為什么女性沒有呢?

Cryptocurrencies are, of course, risky: their price is highly volatile and in some cases their digital exchanges have been hacked.

當(dāng)然，加密數(shù)字貨幣是有風(fēng)險的：它們的價格劇烈波動，在有些情況下，它們的數(shù)字交易所遭到了黑客侵入。

Anna Dreber, an economics professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, studies differences in risk tolerance between men and women. She cites one study that showed a 64 per cent probability that a random man would be prepared to take more risk than a random woman. Yet that alone is not enough to account for the difference between male and female bitcoin investors.

斯德哥爾摩經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)院(Stockholm School of Economics)的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)教授安娜•德雷貝(Anna Dreber)研究了男性和女性在風(fēng)險容忍度方面的差異。她引用的一項(xiàng)研究顯示，隨機(jī)選取一男一女，男性比女性愿意承擔(dān)更多風(fēng)險的概率為64%。然而，僅憑這一點(diǎn)還不足以解釋男性和女性比特幣投資者之間的差異。

Much is down to information flow. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies first became popular in the geekiest parts of the tech and finance industries, both male-dominated. The early word was spread mainly on Reddit and forums for discussing video games. Mt Gox, once the biggest exchange for virtual currency before it was hacked, started life as a platform for trading playing cards for a fantasy game called Magic: The Gathering.

很多事情取決于信息流。比特幣和加密貨幣首先在科技和金融行業(yè)“極客”最集中的角落流行起來，而這些角落是由男性主導(dǎo)的。最初，相關(guān)消息主要在Reddit以及討論視頻游戲的論壇上傳播。在被黑客入侵前曾是最大虛擬貨幣交易平臺的Mt Gox，起步時是一個交易幻想游戲《萬智牌》(Magic: The Gathering)卡牌的平臺。

Stephanie Hardesty, an investor who also describes herself as a bitcoin anthropologist, says she became interested in the currency in 2013 for two reasons. First, a male friend who was a software developer started telling her about bitcoin. Second, she found bitcoin allied with another interest of hers: cross stitch. After discovering she could cross stitch the QR codes that link to bitcoin wallets, she now keeps her public address as cross-stitch code on her desk at work and her private key safely offline, in a cross-stitched cold-storage wallet.

自稱是比特幣人類學(xué)家的投資者斯蒂芬妮•哈德斯蒂(Stephanie Hardesty)表示，她在2013年對比特幣產(chǎn)生興趣有兩個原因。首先，一位身為軟件開發(fā)員的男性朋友開始向她介紹比特幣。其次，她發(fā)現(xiàn)比特幣與她的另一個興趣——十字繡——吻合。在發(fā)現(xiàn)她可以把鏈接到比特幣錢包的二維碼做成十字繡之后，她現(xiàn)在把她的公共地址二維碼十字繡放在她的辦公桌上，把她的私鑰安全地離線存放，放在一個有十字繡的冷存儲(cold-storage，指離線存放——譯者注)錢包里。

Hardesty believes that as cryptocurrencies become more mainstream, they are attracting more diverse investors: more women, more people of colour and more leftwingers.

哈德斯蒂認(rèn)為，隨著加密數(shù)字貨幣變得更加主流，它們將吸引更為多元化的投資者：更多女性、更多膚色的人和更多左派人士。

Many in the field are working to make cryptocurrencies more accessible. There are women leading crypto-related companies and in top roles at banks such as Blythe Masters, a former JPMorgan Chase banker who runs blockchain start-up Digital Asset Holdings, and Amber Baldet at JPMorgan.

許多業(yè)內(nèi)人士正在努力使加密貨幣更容易獲得。有一些女性領(lǐng)導(dǎo)著加密相關(guān)公司，或者在銀行擔(dān)任相關(guān)的高層職位，例如摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)前銀行家、目前經(jīng)營著區(qū)塊鏈初創(chuàng)企業(yè)Digital Asset Holdings的布萊斯•馬斯特斯(Blythe Masters)，以及摩根大通的安布爾•巴爾代(Amber Baldet)。

Of course, now bitcoin is more mainstream there may be far less money to be made — and there’s a lot of risk attached, as its price drop of almost 50 per cent since the start of the year shows. When we spoke, Hardesty thought it would be better late than never for me, a “sad no-coiner”, to buy bitcoin.

當(dāng)然，既然比特幣已經(jīng)更加主流了，可賺的錢也許更少——而且還有很多風(fēng)險，正如自今年初以來其價格暴跌近50%所表明的那樣。當(dāng)我跟她交談時，哈德斯蒂認(rèn)為，對于我這個“悲哀的無幣者”，晚買比特幣也好過永遠(yuǎn)不買比特幣。

Her advice is to avoid the sometimes complex process required to buy and store cryptocurrencies, head to a bitcoin ATM and lock the receipt in a fire-safe box. Or I could just ask my brother for help. Then again, given the latest market turmoil, maybe I’ll start calling myself a “lucky no-coiner” instead.

她的建議是，避免購買和存儲加密貨幣所需的有時復(fù)雜的過程，而最好是找到一臺比特幣ATM機(jī)，然后將收據(jù)鎖在一個防火箱里。或者我干脆找我弟弟幫忙。但是話說回來，鑒于最近的市場動蕩，也許我會開始自稱為“幸運(yùn)的無幣者”。

Hannah Kuchler is an FT correspondent in San Francisco

漢娜•庫赫勒(Hannah Kuchler)是英國《金融時報》駐舊金山記者