A delegation of American executives flew to Beijing in April for a secret meeting at the Grand Hyatt hotel, just blocks from Tiananmen Square.

4月，一个美国企业高管代表团飞到北京，在东方君悦大酒店参加了一次秘密会议，那里距天安门广场仅几个街区之遥。

They went to meet with the new kingmakers in what has become one of the grandest and strangest experiments in money the world has seen: the virtual currency known as Bitcoin.

和他们会面的是业内新晋的实权人物，而他们所在的这个行业，是人类历史上最宏大、最古怪的一场金钱实验：被称为“比特币”的虚拟货币。

Against long odds, and despite an abstruse structure, in which supercomputers are said to mine the currency via mathematical formulas, Bitcoin has become a multibillion-dollar industry. It has attracted major investments from Silicon Valley and a significant following on Wall Street.

比特币有一个令人费解的体系，据称要利用超级计算机作数学计算来开采货币，然而出人意料的是，它已经成为一个数十亿美元的产业。硅谷向它注入了大笔投资，还引起了华尔街的密切关注。

Yet Bitcoin, which is both a new kind of digital money and an unusual financial network, is having something of an identity crisis. Like so many technologies before it, the virtual currency is coming up against the inevitable push and pull between commercial growth and the purity of its original ambitions.

然而，作为一种新型的数码货币和独特的金融网络，比特币正面临一场身份危机。和此前的许多技术一样，虚拟货币也不可避免地要面对一种推拉效应：一方面要商业增长，另一方面要维持其初心的纯洁性。

In its early conception, Bitcoin was to exist beyond the control of any single government or country. It would be based everywhere and nowhere.

根据最初的设想，比特币是不受任何单一政府或国家控制的。它无处不在，又无处可寻。

Yet despite the talk of a borderless currency, a handful of Chinese companies have effectively assumed majority control of the Bitcoin network. They have done so through canny investments and vast farms of computer servers dispersed around the country. The American delegation flew to Beijing because that was where much of the Bitcoin power was concentrated.

然而，虽然被认为是一种无国界货币，比特币网络的多数控制权实际上已经落入几家中国公司手中。他们是通过精明的投资和分布于该国各地的巨型计算机服务器矿场实现这一点的。美国代表团要飞到北京，正是因为比特币的相当一部分权力就集中在那里。

At the time of the meeting, over 70 percent of the transactions on the Bitcoin network were going through just four Chinese companies, known as Bitcoin mining pools — and most flowed through just two of those companies. That gives them what amounts to veto power over any changes to the Bitcoin software and technology.

在会议举行之时，比特币网络七成以上的交易是通过四家中国公司进行的，也就是所谓的比特币矿池——而大多数的流通只涉及其中的两家公司。这样一来，他们对比特币软件和技术上的任何改变就有了否决权。

China has become a market for Bitcoin unlike anything in the West, fueling huge investments in server farms as well as enormous speculative trading on Chinese Bitcoin exchanges. Chinese exchanges have accounted for 42 percent of all Bitcoin transactions this year, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times by Chainalysis. Just last week, the Chinese internet giant, Baidu, joined with three Chinese banks to invest in the American Bitcoin company Circle.

中国形成了一个西方世界无法比拟的比特币市场，巨量投资进入服务器矿场，中国的比特币交易所里进行着大宗投机交易。据《纽约时报》委托Chainalysis进行的分析，中国交易所今年的交易额占了总额的42%。就在上周，中国互联网巨头百度还和三家中国银行联手，投资了美国比特币公司Circle。

But China’s clout is raising worries about Bitcoin’s independence and decentralization, which was supposed to give the technology freedom from the sort of government crackdowns and interventions that are commonplace in the Chinese financial world.

但是，中国的影响力让人开始担心比特币的独立性和去中心化。这些特性本应让比特币技术不需畏惧政府的打压和干预。而政府打压和干预又在中国金融界司空见惯。

“The concentration in a single jurisdiction does not bode well,” said Emin Gun Sirer, a professor at Cornell and a Bitcoin researcher. “We need to pay attention to these things if we want decentralization to be a meaningful thing.”

“集中在一个单一辖区不是什么好兆头，”康奈尔大学教授、比特币研究者埃明·古恩·希拉尔(Emin Gun Sirer)说。“这些是我们需要留意的，否则去中心化就会流于表面。”

The power of Chinese companies has already come to play a major role in a civil war that has divided Bitcoin followers over the last year and led to the departure of one of the top developers of the virtual currency. The dispute has hinged on technical matters but also on bigger questions of what Bitcoin should look like in 10 or 20 years.

去年的一场内战导致这种虚拟货币的信徒出现分裂，其中一位顶尖开发者因此离开了社区，中国公司在那一战中已经扮演了重要的角色。争执是围绕一些技术问题展开的，但事关比特币未来10年、20年发展的大问题也牵扯其中。

The American companies that journeyed to the Grand Hyatt — including venture capital-funded start-ups like Coinbase and Circle — are fighting to make Bitcoin bigger. They hope to expand the capacity of the Bitcoin network so that it can process more transactions and compete with the PayPals and Visas of the world.

前往东方君悦的美国代表包括Coinbase、Circle等创投基金支持的创业公司，他们在力求扩大比特币的规模。他们希望对比特币网络进行扩容，可以处理更多的交易，与PayPal、Visa等服务抗衡。

The current size of the network goes back to the early days, when Bitcoin’s founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, limited the amount of data that could travel through the network, essentially capping it at about seven transactions a second. As Bitcoin has grown more popular, those limits have caused severe congestion and led to lengthy transaction delays.

目前的网络规模是早年决定的，当时比特币的创始人中本聪（Satoshi Nakamoto，音）对在网络中流通的数据总量进行了限制，本质上就是给交易设定了每秒七次左右的上限。随着比特币的日渐普及，这些限制导致了严重的阻塞，交易处理会有大幅延时。

The American delegation in China had a software proposal, known as Bitcoin Classic, that would change all that.

前往中国的美国代表提出了一个软件方案叫做“比特币经典版”(Bitcoin Classic)，可以彻底改变这种局面。

The Chinese companies, though, had the ultimate decision-making power over any changes in the software, and they did not agree with the American delegation. The Chinese had thrown in their lot with another group of longtime programmers who wanted to keep Bitcoin smaller, in part to keep it more secure. The Americans hoped to persuade the Chinese to switch sides.

然而中国公司对软件的任何改动有着终极裁决权，他们不同意美国代表的想法。中国人选择站在另一个程序员群体一方，这些人一直都想让比特币保持在较小的规模，一定程度上是为了保障安全。美国人希望劝说中国人改弦更张。

In a hotel conference room, the American team of about a half-dozen people cycled through its PowerPoint slides, in English and Chinese, arguing for expansion of the network, most notably pointing to the long delays that have been plaguing the system as a result of the congestion. The Chinese companies listened and conferred among themselves. The group took a break for a lunch of lamb and dumplings at a nearby mall.

在一间酒店会议室里，五六人组成的美国代表团围着中英双语的PowerPoint幻灯片，陈述他们扩张网络的理由，其中主要的一点是长延时，这个由阻塞导致的问题正困扰着整个系统。中国公司听了美方陈述，彼此间也商量了一番。中午大家到附近的购物中心吃了羊肉和饺子。

“We kept coming back and saying, ‘For better or worse, you have this leadership in the industry, and everyone is looking to you to show some leadership,’” said Brian Armstrong, chief executive of Coinbase.

“我们反复说，‘不管怎么说，你们是这个产业的领导者，大家都期待你们有领袖的作为，’”Coinbase首席执行官布莱恩·阿姆斯特朗(Brian Armstrong)说。

Ultimately, Mr. Armstrong said, “We were unable to convince them.”

最终，“我们没能说服他们，”阿姆斯特朗说。

Some Bitcoin advocates have complained that the Chinese companies have been motivated only by short-term profit, rather than the long-term success and ideals of the project. Bobby Lee, chief executive of the Bitcoin company BTCC, which is based in Shanghai, bristled at that — and at the notion that the Chinese companies represent any sort of united front. He attended the April meeting and pointed out that the Chinese companies had disagreed among themselves on how urgent it is to make changes to the Bitcoin software.

一些比特币倡导人士指责中国公司只受短期利润的驱使，不在乎长远的成功和该计划的理想。总部在上海的比特币公司BTCC首席执行官李启元被这种言论激怒了——包括把中国公司当作一个同仇敌忾的群体来看待。他参加了4月的会议，并指出在改变比特币软件的紧迫性上，中国公司之间是存在分歧的。

He said the American companies failed to understand the power dynamics in the room that day. “It was almost like imperialistic Westerners coming to China and telling us what to do,” Mr. Lee said in an interview last week. “There has been a history on this. The Chinese people have long memories.”

他说那天在会议室里，美国公司对权力的消长没有认识。“给人感觉就像高高在上的西方人来到中国，对我们指手画脚，”李启元在上周接受采访时说。“这种事以前发生过。中国人记性很好的。”