原始文献 / 论坛帖 / Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency
Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency
P2P Foundation · 2009-02-18 20:50:00 UTC
它是一个全球分布式数据库，数据库的增补由多数人的共识决定，依据的是他们遵循的一套规则：
- 每当有人找到工作量证明生成一个区块，他就能得到一些新币
- 工作量证明的难度每两周调整一次，目标是整个网络平均每小时 6 个区块
- 每个区块给出的币每 4 年减半
可以说，币是由多数人发行的。发行量有限，且事先确定。
举个例子，如果有 1000 个节点，每小时有 6 个节点得到币，那你可能要等一周才能得到点什么。
关于 Sepp 的问题，确实，没有人扮演中央银行或美联储的角色，来随着用户群的增长调整货币供应。那需要一个受信任方来决定价值，因为我不知道软件有什么办法能知道现实世界中东西的真实价值。如果有什么巧妙的办法，或者我们愿意信任某人来主动管理货币供应、把它锚定到某种东西上，规则本来也可以写成那样的。
从这个意义上说，它更像贵金属。不是供应变化来维持价值不变，而是供应事先确定，价值变化。随着用户数量增长，每枚币的价值会上升。它有形成正反馈循环的潜力：用户增加，价值上涨，这又会吸引更多用户来分享价值上涨的收益。
英文原文
It is a global distributed database, with additions to the database by consent of the majority, based on a set of rules they follow:
- Whenever someone finds proof-of-work to generate a block, they get some new coins
- The proof-of-work difficulty is adjusted every two weeks to target an average of 6 blocks per hour (for the whole network)
- The coins given per block is cut in half every 4 years
You could say coins are issued by the majority. They are issued in a limited, predetermined amount.
As an example, if there are 1000 nodes, and 6 get coins each hour, it would likely take a week before you get anything.
To Sepp's question, indeed there is nobody to act as central bank or federal reserve to adjust the money supply as the population of users grows. That would have required a trusted party to determine the value, because I don't know a way for software to know the real world value of things. If there was some clever way, or if we wanted to trust someone to actively manage the money supply to peg it to something, the rules could have been programmed for that.
In this sense, it's more typical of a precious metal. Instead of the supply changing to keep the value the same, the supply is predetermined and the value changes. As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases. It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value.