The mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, released the software in early 2009. It was designed to provide both a digital coin and a new way to move and hold money, much as email had made it possible to send messages without using a postal service.

2009年初，比特币的神秘创造者中本聪(Satoshi Nakamoto)发布了相关软件。它的设计意图是既提供一种数字货币，又提供一种新的转移和保存资金的方式，很像电子邮件使人们可以不使用邮政服务便能传递消息。

From the beginning, the system was designed to be decentralized — operated by all the people who joined their computers to the Bitcoin network and helped to process the transactions, as Wikipedia entries are written and maintained by volunteers around the world.

从一开始，它就被设计成了一个分散的系统——由所有把计算机加入比特币网络，并帮助处理交易的人管理，就像维基百科(Wikipedia)的条目由全世界的志愿者输入和维护一样。

The appeal of a group-run network was that there would be no single point of failure and no company that could shut things down if the police intervened. This was censorship-free money, Bitcoin followers liked to say. Decision-making power for the network resided with the people who joined it, in proportion to the computing power they provided.

集体管理网络的吸引力在于不会出现单点故障，并且如果警察介入的话，没有哪个公司能够关停业务。比特币的支持者喜欢说，这是一种不会受到审查的货币。对这个网络的决策权掌握在加入该网络的人手中，与他们提供的计算能力成比例。

The allure of new riches provided the incentive to join: Every 10 minutes, new Bitcoins would be released and given to one of the computers helping to maintain the system. In the lingo of Bitcoin, these computers were said to be “mining” for currency. They also served as accountants for the network.

新财富的诱惑促使人们加入其中：每10分钟，便会有新的比特币发行并被交给帮助维护该系统的其中一台计算机。在比特币行话中，这些计算机被称作是在“挖”比特币。它们还充当着该网络的会计。

For the first few years, aside from its use as a payment method on the Silk Road, an online drug market that has since been shut down, Bitcoin failed to gain much traction. It burst into the world’s consciousness in 2013 when the price of the digital money began to spike, in no small part because Chinese investors began trading Bitcoins in large numbers.

头几年，除了被已关闭的在线毒品市场“丝绸之路”(Silk Road)用作支付方式外，比特币没能真正有所作为。2013年，当比特币的价格开始飙升时，这种数字货币一举进入所有人的视野。比特币价格飙升，在很大程度上是因为中国投资者开始大量交易比特币。

Mr. Lee said the Chinese took quickly to Bitcoin for several reasons. For one thing, the Chinese government had strictly limited other potential investment avenues, giving citizens a hunger for new assets. Also, Mr. Lee said, the Chinese loved the volatile price of Bitcoin, which gave the fledgling currency network the feeling of online gambling, a very popular activity in China.

李启元称，中国人迅速喜欢上比特币有多方面的原因。首先，中国政府严格限制其他潜在的投资渠道，导致民众渴望新资产。同时，李启元还表示，中国人喜欢比特币价格不稳定这一点，它让这个新兴货币网络给人一种在线赌博的感觉。在线赌博活动在中国非常盛行。

There has been widespread speculation that Chinese people have used Bitcoin to get money out of the country and evade capital controls, but Mr. Lee and other experts said the evidence suggests this is not a significant phenomenon.

外界普遍猜测中国人利用比特币将资金转移至国外，规避资本控制，但李启元和其他专家称，证据显示这种现象不明显。

“No Chinese person is pushing for Bitcoin because it’s libertarian or because it’s going to cause the downfall of governments,” said Mr. Lee, who moved to China after growing up in Africa and the United States and studying at Stanford. “This was an investment.”

“没有中国人是因为比特币具有自由论属性，或是比特币会导致政府垮台而支持比特币的，”李启元说。“这是一种投资。”李启元在非洲和美国长大，并曾在斯坦福大学求学，之后来到中国。

The extent of the speculative activity in China in late 2013 pushed the price of a single Bitcoin above $1,000. That surge — and the accompanying media spotlight — led China’s government to intervene in December 2013 and cut off the flow of money between Chinese banks and Bitcoin exchanges, popping what appeared to be a Bitcoin bubble.

2013年末，中国严重的投机活动将一个比特币的价格抬高至超过1000美元（约合6600元人民币）。价格暴涨——连同随之而来的媒体关注——促使中国政府在2013年12月出面干预，切断了中国的银行与比特币交易平台之间的资金流动，导致看似出现泡沫的比特币繁荣景象一度破灭。

The frenzy, though, awakened interest in another aspect of the currency: Bitcoin mining.

但这股狂潮却唤起了对比特币另一方面的兴趣：对比特币的挖掘。

Peter Ng, a former investment manager, is one of the many people in China who moved from trading Bitcoins to amassing computing power to mine them. First, he mined for himself. More recently he has created data centers across China where other people can pay to set up their own mining computers. He now has 28 such centers, all of them filled with endless racks of servers, tangled cords and fans cooling the machines.

很多中国人从交易比特币转向为挖比特币而积聚计算能力。前投资经理彼得·黄(Peter Ng)便是其中之一。一开始，他是为自己挖比特币。后来，他在中国各地成立数据中心。在这些数据中心，其他人可以出钱配置自己的挖掘计算机。他现在拥有28个这样的数据中心，全都摆满了放着服务器的架子、相互缠绕的电线和给机器散热的电扇。

Mr. Ng, 36, said he had become an expert in finding cheap energy, often in places where a coal plant or hydroelectric dam was built to support some industrial project that never happened. The Bitcoin mining machines in his facilities use about 38 megawatts of electricity, he said, enough to power a small city.

现年36岁的彼得·黄说自己已经成了寻找廉价能源的专家。有廉价能源的地方常常有火电厂或水坝。它们本是为了支持某个工业项目而建，但后来项目未能落实。他说那些数据中心里的比特币挖掘机要用3.8万千瓦电，这些电足以供应一座小城市。

The people who put their machines in Mr. Ng’s data centers generally join mining pools, which smooth the financial returns of smaller players. A popular one, BTCC Pool, is run by Mr. Lee’s company. This month it attracted about 13 percent of the total computational power on the Bitcoin network. The most powerful pool in China — or anywhere in the world — is known as F2Pool, and it had 27 percent of the network’s computational power this month.

把自己的计算机放在彼得·黄的数据中心的人通常会加入矿池。矿池会让规模较小的玩家获得更为平稳的经济回报。颇受欢迎的矿池BTCC Pool便由李启元所在的公司运营。本月，该矿池吸引了比特币网络总计算能力的大约13%。中国——或许也是全世界——最有影响力的矿池叫F2Pool，本月在比特币网络的计算能力中占了27%。

Big pool operators have become the kingmakers in the Bitcoin world: Running the pools confers the right to vote on changes to Bitcoin’s software, and the bigger the pool, the more voting power. If members of a pool disagree, they can switch to another pool. But most miners choose a pool based on its payout structure, not its Bitcoin politics.

在比特币世界，大矿池的运营商大权在握：运营矿池让它们有权对比特币软件的改变进行投票表决，并且矿池越大，投票权越大。如果某矿池的成员有不同意见，他们可以转至其他矿池。但大部分“矿工”都是根据矿池的支付结构，而非比特币政治来进行选择的。

It was his role overseeing BTCC Pool that got Mr. Lee invited to the meeting with the American delegation in Beijing. The head of operations at F2Pool, Wang Chun, was also there.

正因为是BTCC Pool的负责人，李启元才受邀在北京与美国代表团召开会议。与会者还包括F2Pool的业务负责人王春。

Perhaps the most important player in the Chinese Bitcoin world is Jihan Wu, 30, a former investment analyst who founded what is often described in China as the world’s most valuable Bitcoin company. That company, Bitmain, began to build computers in 2013 using chips specially designed to do mining computations.

在中国的比特币界，最重要的玩家或许是30岁的吴忌寒。曾是一名投资分析师的他创建了一家名叫比特大陆的公司。在中国，该公司常被称作全世界最有价值的比特币公司。2013年，比特大陆开始用经过特殊设计的芯片，打造用来进行挖矿计算的计算机。

Bitmain, which now has 250 employees, manufactures and sells Bitcoin mining computers, operates a pool that other miners can join, called Antpool, and also keeps a significant number of mining machines for itself, which it maintains in Iceland and the United States, as well as in China. The machines that Bitmain retains for itself account for 10 percent of the computing power on the global Bitcoin network and are enough to produce new coins worth about $230,000 each day, at the exchange rate this week.

比特大陆现有员工250名，从事的业务包括生产和销售比特币挖矿机，运营其他矿工可加入的蚂蚁矿池(Antpool)，同时自己也保留了数量可观的挖矿机。这些矿机分布在冰岛、美国和中国。比特大陆给自己保留的挖矿机，占全球比特币网络计算能力的10%。按照本周的汇率，它们每天足以产生价值约为23万美元的新比特币。

Mr. Wu and the other mining pool operators in China have often seemed somewhat surprised, and even unhappy, that their investments have given them decision-making power within the Bitcoin network. “Miners are the hardware guys. Why are you asking us about software?” is the line that Mr. Ng said he often hears from miners.

对于投资给他们在比特币网络内部带来的决策权，吴忌寒和中国其他的矿池运营商常常看上去有些惊讶，甚至不悦。彼得·黄称自己经常听到矿工说，“矿工是做硬件的。你们为什么要问我们软件的事？”

This attitude initially led most Chinese miners to align themselves with old-line Bitcoin coders, known as the core programmers, who have resisted changing the software. The miners wanted to take no risks with the money they were minting.

起初，这种态度促使大部分中国矿工与被称作核心程序员的比特币编程人员结成同盟。保守的核心程序员不愿改变软件，矿工则要确保自己创造的财富万无一失。

But lately, Mr. Wu has grown increasingly vocal in his belief that the network is going to have to expand, and soon, if it wants to keep its followers. He said in an email this week that if the core programmers did not increase the number of transactions going through the network by July, he would begin looking for alternatives to expand the network.

但最近，吴忌寒越来越公开地表达自己的信念：要想留住追随者，比特币网络将不得不扩大，而且要快。他本周在一封电子邮件中表示，如果核心程序员不在7月之前增加整个网络的交易数量，他将开始寻找扩大网络的替代方案。

However the software debate goes, there are fears that China’s government could decide, at some point, to pressure miners in the country to use their influence to alter the rules of the Bitcoin network. The government’s intervention in 2013 suggests that Bitcoin is not too small to escape notice.

不管软件之争将如何发展，有人担心中国政府可能会在某个时间点上决定向国内的矿工施压，要求他们利用自己的影响力改变比特币网络的规则。政府2013年的干预行动表明，比特币问题并非小到能逃过政府的眼睛。

Mr. Wu dismissed that concern. He also said that as more Americans buy his Bitmain machines and take advantage of cheap power in places like Washington State, mining will naturally become more decentralized. Already, he said, 30 to 40 percent of new Bitmain machines are being shipped out of China.

吴忌寒对这种担忧不以为然。他还表示，随着更多的美国人购买比特大陆的挖矿机并利用华盛顿州等地的廉价电力，比特币的挖掘自然会变得更加分散。他说，比特大陆新生产的矿机中，已有30%到40%正在被运往国外。

For now, though, China remains dominant.

但目前，中国依然占据主导地位。

“The Chinese government normally expects its businesses to obtain a leading role in emerging industries,” he said. “China’s Bitcoin businesses have achieved that.”

“中国政府通常希望自己的企业在新兴行业占据领导地位，”他说。“中国的比特币企业做到了。”