加密生态系统：关键要素和风险（国际清算银行）（加密货币） 2023.7.11……【官方发布】提交给G20财长和央行行长的报告。
本报告回顾了加密生态系统的关键要素，并评估了它们的结构性缺陷。有三个主要要点。首先，由于潜在的经济激励，加密生态系统的特点是拥堵和高费用，导致碎片化。其次，尽管具有去中心化的原始精神，但加密和去中心化金融（DeFi）通常具有实质性的事实中心化，这带来了各种风险。第三，虽然DeFi主要复制传统金融体系提供的服务，但它放大了已知风险。此外，由于DeFi不为实体经济中的活动提供资金，其增长是由新用户的投机性涌入推动的，给投资者带来了巨大的风险。该报告概述了减轻加密货币对投资者、传统金融体系和整个经济构成的多重风险的政策选择。
加密生态系统的市值——尽管 2022 年大幅下降——仍达数万亿美元，并且有数千种加密硬币在流通。加密货币的传播本质上是全球性的，并由广泛的投资者推动。
从理论上讲，加密世界建立在去中心化的前提下。而不是依赖中央银行货币和受信任的中介机构，加密货币设想转移的记录由众多匿名验证者提供。去中心化金融或“DeFi”寻求在加密世界中以去中心化的方式复制传统金融服务，通常以稳定币的交换媒介角色为基础。DeFi 结合了区块链上的可编程性和可组合性等创新。这种系统“始终开启”，允许每周7天，每天24小时进行全球交易。
最近的事件揭示了加密愿景与现实之间的巨大分歧。虽然加密在去中心化的旗帜下运作，在实践中，新的中心化中介机构在将资金引导到加密领域并在其中进行中介方面发挥了关键作用。FTX加密货币交易所的内爆只是该行业脆弱性的最显着表现。加密货币没有提供更具弹性的金融架构，而是显示出与传统金融相同的众所周知的漏洞，但以放大的方式。
介绍
本报告回顾了加密生态系统的关键要素，并评估了其结构缺陷。它然后回顾它带来的风险并讨论解决这些问题的选项。它还确定了数据差距并讨论了缓解这些差距的方法。
该报告有三个关键要点。首先，加密生态系统受到高度碎片化，其特点是拥堵和高费用。即使它忠于其最初的去中心化精神，情况也会如此。这些结构性缺陷源于验证者激励的潜在经济学，而不是技术。虽然加密货币提供了一些真正创新的元素，但这些元素可以复制或嵌入到更安全、更值得信赖的传统金融体系中（BIS （2023））。其次，尽管具有去中心化的原始精神，但加密货币和DeFi通常具有实质上事实上的中心化，这引入了各种痛点。一个典型的例子是稳定币，它捎带了中央银行记账单位的信誉，并可能对货币主权构成风险。第三，虽然DeFi主要复制传统金融体系提供的服务，但它并不为实体经济中的任何活动提供资金，而是放大了已知风险。由于增长主要是由希望获得高回报的新用户的投机性涌入推动的，加密货币和DeFi对（尤其是散户）投资者构成了重大风险。总而言之，加密货币固有的结构缺陷使其不适合在货币体系中发挥建设性作用（国际清算银行（2022））。
加密货币的诞生可以追溯到 2009 年比特币的引入：一种在共享公共账本（即使用分布式账本技术 （DLT） 的公共区块链）上转移价值的去中心化、点对点方式。在其最初的表述中，加密货币的特点是没有任何资产支持，以及声称通过去中心化来减少中介机构的影响力（Nakamoto （2008））。
加密资产的所有权及其交易由去中心化验证器验证并记录在公共分类账上。如果卖方想将加密资产转让给买方，买方（通过其加密数字签名识别）会广播交易详细信息，例如交易方、金额或费用。然后，验证者（在一些网络中称为“矿工”）竞争验证交易，无论谁被选中进行验证，都将交易列表附加到区块链中，并获得以加密资产支付的费用的补偿。然后，更新后的区块链将在所有矿工和用户之间共享。通过这种方式，所有交易的历史都是公开的，并与特定的钱包相关联，而交易背后的各方（即钱包的所有者）的真实身份仍然没有披露。从这个意义上说，区块链上的交易是伪匿名的。通过公开广播所有信息，系统验证每笔交易是否与区块链上的转账历史一致，例如加密货币实际上属于卖方并且没有被花费超过一次。
随着加密资产开始吸引潜在投资者的广泛关注，中心化实体在将资金引导到加密货币方面发挥了更大的作用。特别是，中心化交易所促进了比特币、其他加密资产和法定货币之间的转换，通过吸引新的参与者，在一个自我强化的循环中，促进了加密价格的上涨。中心化中介机构（尤其是早期的 Mt Gox 等平台，以及最近的币安、Coinbase、Kraken 和 FTX，直到 2022 年底突然崩溃）一次又一次地重申了他们在加密生态系统中的关键作用。该系统在加密领域被称为集中式金融（CeFi），其起伏导致了加密资产价格的波动（图1.A）。

The crypto ecosystem: key elements and risks
Report submitted to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.
国际清算银行 |11 七月 2023

This report reviews the key elements of the crypto ecosystem and assesses their structural flaws. There are three main takeaways. First, due to underlying economic incentives, the crypto ecosystem is characterised by congestion and high fees, which lead to fragmentation. Second, despite an original ethos of decentralisation, crypto and decentralised finance (DeFi) often feature substantial de-facto centralisation, which introduces various risks. Third, while DeFi mostly replicates services offered by the traditional financial system, it amplifies known risks. Moreover, as DeFi does not finance activity in the real economy, its growth is driven by the speculative influx of new users, with substantial risks to investors. The report outlines policy options to mitigate the multiple risks crypto poses to investors, the traditional financial system and the economy at large.
https://www.bis.org/publ/othp72.htm
https://www.bis.org/publ/othp72.pdf

1.Introduction

The market capitalisation of the crypto ecosystem – notwithstanding a significant decline in 2022 – lies in the trillions of dollars, and there are thousands of crypto coins in circulation. The spread of crypto has been global in nature and driven by a wide range of investors.

In theory, the crypto universe builds on the premise of decentralisation. Rather than relying on central bank money and trusted intermediaries, crypto envisages that the recordkeeping of transfers is provided by a multitude of anonymous validators. Decentralised finance, or “DeFi”, seeks to replicate conventional financial services in a decentralised way within the crypto universe, often underpinned by the medium of exchange role of stablecoins. DeFi incorporates innovations such as programmability and composability on blockchains.1 Such systems are “always on”, allowing for worldwide transactions 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

Recent events revealed a wide divergence between the crypto vision and reality. Although crypto operates under the banner of decentralisation, in practice new centralised intermediaries have played a key role in channelling funds into the crypto universe and intermediating within it. The implosion of the FTX crypto exchange is only the most notable manifestation of the sector’s vulnerabilities. Rather than providing a more resilient financial architecture, crypto displayed the same well known vulnerabilities of traditional finance, but in amplified ways.

This report reviews the key elements of the crypto ecosystem and assesses its structural flaws. It then goes over the risks that it poses and discusses options for addressing them. It also identifies data gaps and discusses ways to alleviate them.

The report has three key takeaways. First, the crypto ecosystem is subject to a high degree of fragmentation and is characterised by congestion and high fees. This would have been the case even if it had stayed true to its original decentralised ethos. These structural flaws derive from the underlying economics of incentives of validators rather than from technology. And while crypto has offered some elements of genuine innovation, these can be replicated or embedded in the safer and more trusted traditional finance system (BIS (2023)). Second, despite an original ethos of decentralisation, crypto and DeFi often feature substantial de facto centralisation, which introduces various pain points. A prime example concerns stablecoins, which piggyback on the credibility of the central bank’s unit of account and may pose risks to monetary sovereignty. Third, while DeFi mostly replicates services offered by the traditional financial system, it does not finance any activity in the real economy but amplifies known risks. As growth is driven mainly by the speculative influx of new users hoping for high returns, crypto and DeFi pose substantial risks to (especially retail) investors. In sum, crypto’s inherent structural flaws make it unsuitable to play a constructive role in the monetary system (BIS (2022)).

2.1 Unbacked crypto

The birth of crypto dates to the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009: a decentralised, peer-to-peer means of transferring value on a shared public ledger (ie a public blockchain using distributed ledger technology (DLT)). In its original formulation, crypto was characterised by not being backed by any asset, as well as by a stated claim to reduce the influence of intermediaries through decentralisation (Nakamoto (2008)).

Ownership of crypto assets and transactions with them are verified by decentralised validators and recorded on the public ledger. If a seller wants to transfer cryptoassets to a buyer, the buyer (identified through their cryptographic digital signature) broadcasts the transaction details, eg transacting parties, amount or fees. Validators (in some networks called “miners”) then compete to verify the transaction, and whoever is selected to verify appends the list of transactions to the blockchain and is compensated in fees paid in cryptoassets. The updated blockchain is then shared among all miners and users. In this way, the history of all transactions is publicly observable and tied to specific wallets, while the true identities of the parties behind transactions (ie the owners of the wallets) remain undisclosed. In this sense, transactions on blockchains are pseudo-anonymous. By broadcasting all information publicly, the system verifies that every transaction is consistent with the history of transfers on the blockchain, eg that the cryptocurrency actually belongs to the seller and has not been spent more than once.

As cryptoassets started attracting broader attention from potential investors, centralised entities played a greater role in channelling funds into crypto coins. In particular, centralised exchanges, which facilitated the conversion between Bitcoin, other cryptoassets and fiat money, contributed to rising crypto prices by attracting new participants, in a self-reinforcing loop. Centralised intermediaries (notably platforms such as Mt Gox in the early days, and more recently Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and FTX until its sudden collapse in late 2022) have reasserted their key role in the crypto ecosystem time and time again. This system has come to be known within the crypto space as centralised finance (CeFi), and its ups and downs have contributed to the volatility of cryptoasset prices ces (Graph 1.A).