DALAD BANNER, China — They worked as factory hands, in the coal business and as farmers. Their spirits rose when a coal boom promised to bring factories and jobs to this land of grassy plains in Inner Mongolia. When the boom ebbed, they looked for work wherever they could.
中国达拉特旗——他们在工厂打过工，在煤炭行业干过，还当过农民。在煤炭行业的繁荣预示着能给这片位于内蒙古的草原带来工厂和工作机会时，他们情绪高涨。当这种繁荣褪去时，他们到处找工作。
Today, many have found it at a place that makes money — the digital kind.
如今，很多人在一个地方找到了赚钱的工作，但是数字的那种钱。
Here, in what is locally called the Dalad Economic Development Zone, lies one of the biggest Bitcoin farms in the world. These eight factory buildings with blue-tin roofs account for nearly one-twentieth of the world’s daily production of the cryptocurrency.
在被当地人称之为达拉特经济开发区的地方，坐落着全球最大的比特币矿场之一。这八栋蓝色铁皮屋顶的厂房，占全球比特币日产量的近二十分之一。
Based on today’s prices, it issues $318,000 in digital currency a day.
按照今天的价格，它每天发行价值31.8万美元（约合210万元人民币）的数字货币。
From the outside, the factory — owned by a company called Bitmain China — does not look much different from the other buildings in the industrial park.
从外面看，一家名叫比特大陆的公司拥有的这家工厂和这个工业园里的其他建筑没有太大的不同。
Its neighbors include chemical plants and aluminum smelters. Some of the buildings in the zone were never finished. Except for the occasional coal-carrying truck, the roads are largely silent.
它的邻居包括化工厂和炼铝厂。开发区里的部分建筑一直没有完工。除了偶尔出现的拉煤的卡车外，这里的马路大部分时候都悄无声息。
Inside, instead of heavy industrial machinery, workers tend rows and rows of computers — nearly 25,000 computers in all — crunching the mathematical problems that create Bitcoin.
工厂里面，没有重工业机械，工人们照看着一排排电脑——总共近2.5万台。它们正在解决能创造比特币的数学问题。
Workers carry laptop computers as they walk the aisles looking for breakdowns and checking cable connections. They fill water tanks that keep the computers from melting down or bursting into flame. Around them, hundreds of thousands of cooling fans fill the building with whooshing white noise.
工作人员拿着笔记本电脑沿走廊巡视，寻找出故障的地方，检查线路连接。他们把水箱装满水，防止电脑死机或起火。在他们周围，成千上万台冷却风扇让大楼里充满呼呼的白噪声。
Bitcoin’s believers say it will be the currency of the future. Purely electronic, it can be sent across borders anonymously without oversight by a central authority. That makes it appealing to a diverse and sometimes mismatched group that includes tech enthusiasts, civil libertarians, hackers and criminals.
推崇比特币的人认为，它会成为未来的货币。只需通过电子手段，就可以匿名将比特币转移出境，不会受到中央机构的监管。这让它吸引了一个多元，并且有时差异悬殊的群体，包括科技发烧友、公民自由主义者、黑客和罪犯。
Bitcoin is also, by and large, made in China. The country makes more than two-thirds of all Bitcoin issued daily.
比特币总体上是在中国制造的。在每天发行的所有比特币中，中国的占比超过三分之二。
China has mixed feelings about Bitcoin.
中国对比特币感情复杂。
On one hand, the government worries that Bitcoin will allow Chinese people to bypass its strict limits on how much money they can send abroad, and could also be used to commit crimes. Chinese officials are moving to close Bitcoin exchanges, where the currency is bought and sold, though they have not set a time frame. While that would not affect Bitcoin manufacturing directly, it would make buying and selling Bitcoin more expensive in one of its major markets, potentially hurting prices.
一方面，政府担心比特币让民众得以避开它对资金出境的严格限制，并且比特币可能还会被用于犯罪。中国官方正在采取行动，关闭比特币交易平台，不过官方尚未确定期限。尽管这不会直接影响比特币的制造，但它会增加在比特币主要的市场之一中国买卖比特币的代价，并可能打击到比特币价格。
On the other hand, the digital currency may represent an opportunity for China to push into new technologies, a motivation behind its extensive push into other cutting-edge areas, like driverless cars and artificial intelligence. China continues to offer Bitcoin makers like Bitmain cheap electricity — making Bitcoin requires immense amounts of power — and other inducements.
另一方面，这种数字货币可能代表着中国推进新技术的一个机会。这也是中国全面推动其他尖端领域，比如无人车和人工智能背后的动机。中国继续为比特大陆等比特币制造商提供廉价的电力——生产比特币耗电量巨大——和其他激励措施。
Dalad Banner may be far away from Beijing’s internet start-up scene and southern China’s gadget hub. Still, many of the workers and surrounding residents see a digital opportunity for Dalad Banner and the rest of their part of Inner Mongolia, an area famous in China for half-finished factories and towns so empty that they are sometimes called ghost cities.
达拉特旗也许远离北京的互联网创业盛况和集聚小型电子产品生产的中国南方。但是，这里的很多工人和周边居民看到了达拉特旗和内蒙古其他地区的一个数字机遇。在中国，内蒙古因为烂尾的工厂和太过空旷以至有时被称作鬼城的城镇而出名。
“Now the mine has about 50 employees,” said Wang Wei, the manager of Bitmain China’s Dalad Banner facility, using one of several metaphors for the work being done there. “I feel in the future it might bring hundreds or even thousands of jobs, like the big factories.”
“咱们矿场现在有员工50人左右，”比特大陆达拉特工厂的厂长王伟说。“矿场”是形容此间工作的几个比方之一。“我感觉在未来是非常可能像大型生产企业一样，拥有几百、上千个员工。”
Mr. Wang, a 36-year-old resident and former coal salesman, purchased one Bitcoin about six months ago. It has since more than doubled in value. “I made quite a lot of money,” he said.
36岁的王伟是当地人，曾做过煤矿销售员，他在大约六个月前购买了一个比特币。现在它的价值翻了一倍多。“我挣了不少钱，”他说。
China also sees a potential new source of jobs, particularly in underdeveloped places like Dalad Banner. The county of about 370,000 people on the edge of the vast Kubuqi Desert boasts coal reserves and coal-powered heavy industries like steel. But it lags behind much of the rest of the country in broadly developing its economy. It is part of the urban area of Ordos, a city about 350 miles away from Beijing famous for its empty buildings.
中国出现了一些潜在的新工作来源，尤其是在达拉特旗这种不发达地区。这个县大约有37万人，位于广袤的库布齐沙漠的边缘，以煤炭储备和钢铁等以煤为动力的重工业闻名。但是在经济的整体发展上，它落后于该国的大部分地区。它属于鄂尔多斯市区，鄂尔多斯离北京约350英里，是著名的“鬼城”。
Dalad Banner is not the sort of place that at first glance looks like a home for high-tech work. Indeed, the idea took some getting used to, even among the workers.
达拉特旗不是那种一眼看上去就像高科技园区的地方。的确，有些人慢慢才适应了这个想法，甚至包括那些工人。
“I didn’t know anything about Bitcoin then,” said Li Shuangsheng, a 28-year-old resident who maintains the operations of one of the eight factories.
“之前我对比特币不了解，”28岁的当地居民李双生说。他负责维持八座工厂中一座的运行。
He bounced from job to job — the chemical plant was too noisy and polluted, he said — before he landed about one month ago at Bitmain China’s Dalad Banner factory, one of the few lucrative job opportunities in the sparsely populated region.
他之前换过很多工作，他说化工厂太吵而且有污染。大约一个月前，他开始在比特大陆的达拉特工厂工作。在这个人口稀少的地区，这是为数不多的一个报酬丰厚的工作机会。
Mr. Li does not yet own any Bitcoin, but he is happy with the work and studying up on the subject online when family time permits.
李双生尚未购买比特币，但他喜欢这份工作，有空的时候，会在网上研究比特币。
“Now,” he said, “I’m starting to have some idea.”
“现在，”他说，“我大概对比特币有一些了解了。”
Many at the farm have experienced the ups and downs of the local economy.
矿场里的很多人都经历了当地经济的起起落落。

Bai Xiaotu was laid off from a state-owned furniture factory in 1997. He had been doing different menial jobs until he went to work at Bitmain’s Dalad Banner farm in December as a cleaner.
1997年，白小兔从一家国营家具厂下岗。之后他打过各种工，去年12月，他开始在比特大陆的达拉特矿场当清洁工。
“Look around, there are abandoned factories on both sides of our farm,” said Mr. Bai, a 53-year-old with a weather-beaten face. “Many factories are not doing that great.”
“你看这两边净是废弃的厂，”53岁的白小兔说。他有着一张饱经风霜的脸。“好多厂都不景气。”
But the industry is still new to most. Bai Dong, Mr. Bai’s 31-year-old son, had never heard of Bitcoin when his father first got the job. After searching on the internet, he found that the Bitcoin price was rising quickly and that the farm was one of the biggest in the world. “I feel positive about the future of the industry,” Mr. Bai said.
不过，对大部分人来说，这个行业依然很新鲜。白小兔31岁的儿子白东在父亲开始做这份工作之前从未听说过比特币。他在网上搜索之后发现，比特币的价格在快速上涨，而这个矿场是全世界最大的一个。“我觉得这个行业挺有发展前景的，”白东说到。
But he is still confused what Bitcoin mining is.
不过，他依然对比特币挖矿感到不解。
“We have coal mines,” he said. “Now we have a Bitcoin mine. They are both mines. What’s their relationship?”
“我们有煤矿，”他说。“比特币也是矿嘛，都是矿，这有什么关系呢？”