本文作者Jason Calacanis是Uber、Talla等150家初创企业的天使投资人，同时也是投资畅销书《ANGEL》的作者。
The author of this paper, Jason Calacanis, is an angel investor in 150 start-ups, such as Uber and Talla, as well as author of the investment best-selling book, ANGEL.
此文章由三言财经编译，部分内容有调整。
01 为什么我要警告大家？
Why should I warn you?
有个好朋友问我：“如果你的‘90%的加密货币项目都是诈骗、没有竞争力’的观点是对的，那你从公开表达立场中获得了什么？”
A good friend asked me, "What do you get from the public expression of your position if your view that '90% of the encoded money items are fraudulent and uncompetitive' is correct?"
我花了好一会儿来思考这个问题。
It took me a while to think about it.
为什么我会在社交媒体和新闻网站上发出警告，提醒大家要谨慎投资各种不规范的、匿名的、容易被操纵的、被黑客攻击的、由恶意的玩家经营的加密货币呢？
Why do I warn on social media and news sites of the need to be careful to invest irregular, anonymous, easily manipulated, hacked, encrypted money run by malicious players?
我给出了我的答案：“大概是保护人们避免财产损失吧。”
And I gave my answer: "It's about protecting people from loss of property."
02 虚拟货币的复杂情结
02 Complicated Trench of Virtual Currency
在热烈地关注比特币这类项目的早期发展之后，我对虚拟货币有一种复杂的情结。
Having followed with keen interest the early development of projects such as Bitcoin, I have a complex relationship with virtual currencies.
6年前，我写了一篇文章叫《我们所见过的最危险的项目》，向投资圈里的人们介绍了比特币。
Six years ago, I wrote an article called " The most dangerous project we've ever seen " to introduce bitcoin to people in the investment circle.
尽管我不进行数字货币的交易，我通过投资Robinhood, Abra和Talla.com这些明星创业公司与虚拟货币有了许多接触。
Although I do not trade in digital money, I have many contacts with virtual money by investing in Robinhood, Abra and Talla.com, which are star start-ups.
首先，我要声明以下5点：
At the outset, I would like to state the following five points:
（1）大多数玩家都会以悲剧收场。
(1) Most players end up with tragedy.
（2）我得写10篇文章才能够讲清楚这个新兴领域所有的风险和骗局，为了让你了解大概情况，我会说明关键的问题——大多数区块链的行家，包括加密货币领域举足轻重的人也会赞同这些问题。
(2) I have to write 10 articles in order to make clear all the risks and scams in this emerging field, and in order to give you an overview of the situation, I will describe the key issues — issues that will also be shared by most of the actors in the block chain, including those who are key in the area of crypto-currency.
（3）至今已经有几十亿美元的加密货币被盗，而且我见过的大多数ICO都是由没有经验或执行能力的人运营的糟糕想法。
(3) Billions of dollars of encrypted money have been stolen to date, and most of the ICOs I have seen are bad ideas run by people with no experience or ability to execute.
（4）BitConnect就是一个很有启发性的例子。
(4) BitConnect is a very instructive example.
（5）再看看那些每天嗡嗡响个不停的群聊信息吧，这些群里有成千上万的人都在买币，再把币推销给下一批接盘的韭菜们。
(5) Take a look at the information that goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on to the next batch of pickles.
现在，尽管多数区块链项目会失败，大部分投进加密货币的钱最终可能会流向少数更高质量的项目，而这些项目在长期会成功，但显然这种情况不能被保证。
Now, although most block chain projects will fail, most of the money invested in encrypted currencies may eventually go to a few higher-quality projects that will be successful in the long term, a situation that is clearly not guaranteed.
事实上，比特币最终可能变得一文不值。
In fact, Bitcoin could end up being worthless.
03 疯狂投资的ICO
03 ICO
ICO，即代币众筹，是加密货币行业的一个黑色漩涡。原因在于：
The ICO, i.e. the collection of currencies, is a black vortex in the crypto-currency industry because:
大部分ICO项目由没有经验的团队发起，这不代表这些团队最终不会成功，但这确实意味着投资人冒着很高的风险。
Most ICO projects are initiated by inexperienced teams, which does not mean that these teams will not succeed in the end, but it does mean that investors take high risks.
当你考虑一个ICO项目时，你需要明白有多重重大风险相互叠加。
When you think about an ICO project, you need to understand that there are multiple and significant risks that overlap.
大多数ICO都包含以下的风险：
未经检验的团队 - 有些是诈骗艺术家，其他人只是很天真。
Untested teams -- some are fraud artists, others are just naive.
顶级项目在业务到达任何里程碑之前筹集了太多资金，而过度集资是一件非常危险的事情。
Top projects raised too much money before any milestone in operations, and over-financing was a very dangerous undertaking.
一大堆项目都是很垃圾的主意，或者是加了顶“加密货币”帽子的衍生产品（比如“有代币的Uber！”和“去中心化的微博！”）。
A whole bunch of projects are either rubbish ideas or derivatives with an “encrypted currency” cap (e.g. “Uber! with tokens” and “decentralized microblogging!”).
你不是在购买这些公司的股票，而是购买代币，甚至是未来某一天才可能出现的代币（即SAFT：“对未来代币的简单协议”）。
You are not buying the shares of these companies, you are buying tokens, even those that might happen in the future (i.e. SAFT: “Simple agreement for future tokens”).
用好听点的话来说，你是在投资一个白皮书，实际上你投资的是“用PDF描述的一系列想法”。
In good words, you are investing in a white paper, and in fact you are investing in “a set of ideas described in PDF”.
这些产品的法律框架很少，各国证监会都已经发出警告。这下你能明白为什么中国要禁止ICO了吧？
There are few legal frameworks for these products, and national SECs have issued warnings. You can see why China is banning the ICO?
因为你对持有的代币没有任何权利，它们甚至算不上资产。
Because you have no right to hold tokens, they are not even assets.
04 ICO风险远高于天使投资
04 ICO risks much more than angels invest
如果你把ICO的风险和投资初创企业的风险做比较，那么我的工作可以这么用风险来衡量：
If you compare the risks of ICO with the risks of investing in start-ups, then my work can be measured in this way:
我们投资创业公司时，这些公司通常已经建立了他们的最小可行产品或市场上的产品有一些早期的牵引力（而不是白皮书，这通常不是比餐巾纸的想法更复杂）。
When we invest in start-ups, these companies usually have built up their least viable products or products on the market with some early pull (rather than white papers, which are not usually more complicated than the idea of napkins).
我们获得了公司的股权（而不是实际上从未使用过的代币）。
We have acquired an equity interest in the company (rather than a token that has never actually been used).
我们在投资者协议中有保护条款，使我们的股权免于被稀释，这赋予我们知情权、按比例、反稀释和其他防止不良企业拿我们的钱跑路的权利。
We have protection clauses in investor agreements to protect our equity from dilution, which give us the right to know, scale, counter-reduce and other rights to prevent bad businesses from taking our money.
我们有几十年的法律监管和压力测试系统。
We have decades of legal regulation and stress testing systems.
我们跟项目的创始人见了很多次面，并进行尽职调查，而不是把比特币放进他们的数字钱包。
We met many times with the founders of the project and conducted due diligence instead of putting bitcoin in their digital wallets.
Hey 现在，我并不是说我永远不会购买代币，但我很清楚，代币通常要么是产品众筹、捐赠，给不称职的人的礼物，要么就是一个骗局。
Hey, I am not saying now that I will never buy a token, but I am well aware that a token is usually either a gift from a crowd of products, a donation to an incompetent person, or a fraud.
根据我的猜测，大概有百分之十的项目将会看到曙光，也有类似天使投资的成功机会。所以也许10%到20%会成功。
According to my guess, about 10 percent of the projects will see the dawn, and there will be a chance for an angel-like investment. So maybe 10 to 20 percent will succeed.
这让我相信，98%的项目会让投资人赔钱。这意味着你必须从购买的50种代币的其中一种获得50倍的投资收益，才能实现收支平衡。
This leads me to believe that 98% of the projects will cost investors money. This means that you have to earn 50 times as much from one of the 50 coins that you buy in order to achieve a balance of payments.
这种情况可能会发生，起码作为天使投资人，我有3000倍收益的投资，还有一些20-50倍收益的投资。
This may happen, at least as an angel investor, with an investment of 3,000 times the return and some 20-50 times the return.
05 比特币价值可能归零
05 Bitcoin may be worth zero
坚信比特币HODL(一种用“hold”来表示“持有”的游戏，就像持有你的虚拟货币，从不出售或花掉它们)认为我的说法很疯狂，但我们已经见证过很多次，很多早期项目看似很有前景但很快就死掉了，直到某一个项目脱颖而出，以火箭般的速度增长，占领大部分市场份额。
Convinced that the Bitcoin HDL (a game that uses the word "hold" as a virtual currency that never sells or spends them) thinks my statement is crazy, we have witnessed many times that many early projects seem promising but quickly die, until a project emerges, growing at a rocket-like rate and occupying most of the market share.
比如，iPhone出现以前，很多人在使用黑莓和诺基亚；新浪微博问世之前，不少人在饭否和博客上很活跃。
For example, before the iPhone appeared, many people used BlackBerry and Nokia, and before the new wave Weibo came to life, many were active in food and blogs.
比特币在交易速度、区块链规模、交易成本和治理方面面临巨大挑战。
Bitcoin faces significant challenges in terms of speed of transactions, size of block chains, transaction costs and governance.
在我看来，大多数情况下，比特币将被一种更好的产品取代，它是区块链技术诞生的标志，但会有更好的区块链应用来取代它，这可能会是硬分叉后的另一种新的虚拟货币，或者是一种全新的更好的产品。
In most cases, in my view, Bitcoin will be replaced by a better product, a sign of the birth of block chain technology, but it will be replaced by a better block chain, which may be another new virtual currency after a hard fork, or a brand-new, better product.
随着时间的推移，消费者变得更加精明，这意味着他们会识别出更好的产品，并且更快地转移。我们看到人们在短时间内从Hotmail转移到Gmail，把黑莓换成iphone，从拨号上网到使用宽带。
Over time, consumers become more sophisticated, meaning that they will identify better products and move faster. We see people moving from Hotmail to Gmail in a short time, replacing blackberries with iphones, from dial-up to broadband.
消费者不会对他们的电子邮件帐户和黑莓手机有忠诚度，因为他们实际上只用比特币来进行投机。虚拟货币的转换成本几乎为零，这跟换手机还不一样，这需要备份你的数据，移动你的电话号码，设置你的新iPhone并卖掉旧的手机。
Consumers do not have loyalty to their e-mail accounts and Blackberry phones, because they actually only use bitcoins for speculation. Virtual currency conversion costs almost zero, which is not the same as switching phones, which requires backup of your data, moving your phone numbers, setting up your new iPhone and selling old phones.
这种事情发生在比特币可能只需要几个小时或几天，而不是像RIM(黑莓的母公司)和美国在线(AOL)的衰落那样，要花上一两年。
It may take a few hours or days for this to happen in bitcoin, rather than a year or two, as RIM (the parent of BlackBerry) and the fall of the American Online (AOL).
06 区块链版的亚马逊和谷歌将会出现
Amazon and Google will appear at 06 block chain
我猜区块链领域可能会走出类似亚马逊，谷歌或者netflix的公司。当这事儿发生的时候，将会有十年的时间来购买他们的股票并得到回报。
I guess the block chain area might get out of companies like Amazon, Google, or Netflix. When this happens, it's gonna take ten years to buy their shares and get back.
所以，如果你喜欢加密货币或区块链，我的建议是:
So if you like to encrypt money or block chains, my advice is:
花50%的时间学习。
It takes 50% of the time to study.
投资一篮子项目，但金额不要超过你净值的5%。
Invest in a basket of items, but not more than 5 per cent of your net worth.
准备好在这一篮子项目中损失百分之百的投资。
Ready to lose 100 percent of the investment in this basket.
如果你确实投了一个大赢家，比方说得到50倍的回报，一定要记得买一些“白痴保险”。
If you do vote for a big winner, for example, 50 times the return, you must remember to buy some “dumb insurance”.
最后一点是关键。我和一些朋友们进行了坦诚的交流，他们早早地就购买了比特币，他们是“加密资产富豪和现金穷光蛋”。
The last point is crucial. I had a frank exchange with a group of friends who bought bitcoin early in the morning and who were “encrypted asset rich and cash poor”.
如果你90%的财富都集中在一种货币上，这是一个非常糟糕的想法——除非你控制了这种货币。
If 90 per cent of your wealth is concentrated in a currency, it's a very bad idea — unless you control that currency.
如果你是杰夫·贝佐斯，拥有大量亚马逊股票并不是一个大问题，因为你控制了公司，并对它有了深入的了解。
If you're Jeff Bezos, it's not a big problem to have a large Amazon stock, because you control the company and have an in-depth understanding of it.
07 创始人们，当心ICO吧
如果你拿别人的钱换一个你希望有一天会有效用的代币，你要明白，买它的人相信——99%的时间里——这是一种证券或股权。
If you trade other people's money for a token that you hope will work one day, you have to understand that the man who bought it believed — 99 per cent of the time — that it was a security or equity.
如果人们购买你的代币来赚钱，那它就不再是一个实用的标志，即使那些买家签署了一份文件，上面写着:“我买的是一种实用的标志，而不是一种债权。”
If people buy your tokens to make money, it is no longer a practical sign, even if those buyers sign a document that says, “I buy a useful sign, not a claim”.
为什么?因为我们的一些法律体系和监管机构会支持散户投资者。你会被拖进法庭，被迫解释为什么你要在有限的时间段里出售你的代币，以及你为什么雇佣别人在世界各地销售。
Why? Because some of our legal systems and regulators support bulk investors. You'll be dragged into court and forced to explain why you're selling your tokens for a limited period of time, and why you hire people to sell around the world.
即使你赢了，也会是一场可怕的胜利。问问那些在互联网泡沫破裂后被起诉的人吧。他们花了十年的时间才为自己正名，即使他们是对的，其他人也有终身禁令。
Even if you win, it'll be a terrible victory. Ask those indicted after the burst of the Internet bubble. It took them 10 years to name themselves. Even if they're right, everyone else has a lifetime ban.
而且，正如Talla的创始人Rob May所说的，创始人可能没考虑到ICO会有额外的成本。
Moreover, as Talla's founder, Rob May, said, the founders may not have taken into account the additional costs that ICO would have.
08总结
我不讨厌虚拟货币，但我讨厌看到人们的钱被骗光。
I don't hate virtual money, but I hate to see people being robbed of their money.
这个领域由诈骗和害怕兑现的情绪驱动，这意味着对很多人来说，结局将会很糟糕。
This area is driven by fraud and fear of realization, which means that for many people the outcome will be bad.
如果你愿意，可以花很多时间来投资，但要非常小心。
If you want, you can spend a lot of time investing, but be very careful.
本文来自三言财经（Sanyan Blockchain）
This post is from Sanyan Blockchain.
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