Lethargy bordering on sloth remains the cornerstone of our investment style: This year we neither bought nor sold a share of five of our six major holdings. The exception was Wells Fargo, a superbly-managed, high-return banking operation in which we increased our ownership to just under 10%, the most we can own without the approval of the Federal Reserve Board. About one-sixth of our position was bought in 1989, the rest in 1990.

近乎懒散的沉稳依然是我们投资风格的基石：今年，对于我们的六大重仓股中的五只，我们既没有买入也没有卖出过一股。唯一的例外是 Wells Fargo，这是一家管理卓越、高回报的银行业务，我们将其持股比例增加到了略低于 10% 的水平，这是在未经 Federal Reserve Board 批准的情况下我们所能持有的最高限额。我们持仓中约六分之一是在 1989 年买入的，其余部分是在 1990 年买入的。

The banking business is no favorite of ours. When assets are twenty times equity—a common ratio in this industry—mistakes that involve only a small portion of assets can destroy a major portion of equity. And mistakes have been the rule rather than the exception at many major banks. Most have resulted from a managerial failing that we described last year when discussing the “institutional imperative:” the tendency of executives to mindlessly imitate the behavior of their peers, no matter how foolish it may be to do so. In their lending, many bankers played follow-the-leader with lemming-like zeal; now they are experiencing a lemming-like fate.

银行业并非我们的心头好。当资产是净资产的 20 倍时——这是该行业常见的比例——仅涉及一小部分资产的错误就可能摧毁大部分净资产。而在许多大银行中，错误一直是常态而非例外。大多数错误源于我们去年在讨论“制度性强制力（institutional imperative）”时描述的一种管理失败：即高管们倾向于盲目模仿同行的行为，无论这样做有多么愚蠢。在贷款方面，许多银行家以旅鼠般的狂热玩着“跟随领导者”的游戏；现在，他们正经历着旅鼠般的命运。

Because leverage of 20:1 magnifies the effects of managerial strengths and weaknesses, we have no interest in purchasing shares of a poorly-managed bank at a “cheap” price. Instead, our only interest is in buying into well-managed banks at fair prices.

WARREN BUFFETT:

It’s the nature of the national institutions both life insurance companies and banks. The, no capital requirements protect you against a real run. I mean, if your liabilities all are payable virtually that day or I should say virtually all your liabilities are payable that day, you can’t run a financial institution and be prepared for that. And that’s why we’ve got the Fed and the FDIC. I mean, you can’t stand, if you’re a life company or a bank, you can’t stand around, you can be the most soundly capitalized firm in town but if I hire, if there were no FDIC and the Fed and you had a bank capitalized with 10% of capital and I had one with 5% of capital and I hired 50 people to go over and start standing right in front of your bank, you’re the guy that’s going to fail first. Then when get through with you they’re going to come over to my bank too, that’s why we don’t do that sort of thing because you can’t contain the fire over on the other guy’s bank. But you can’t, you can’t stand a run. So you need the Federal Reserve and the FDIC. And even with Northern Rock, the UK government and came and said we guarantee everything they still had lines. I mean, when people are scared they’re scared. And there is no reason to leave, I mean, if you see if it’s uninsured and you see a line at a bank where you’ve got your money, get in line. (laughs). You know, buy a place from the guy that’s first in line if necessary, you know. And even if you’re at another bank, get in line there and take your mad money and put it under a mattress. You can always put it back a week later as long as there no penalties, why in the world, you know. That’s why we got a Fed and an FDIC and I think it’s one of the, you know, I think the FDIC and Social Security were the two most important things that came out of the ’30s. I mean, the system needed an FDIC.

Warren Buffett：

这其实是全国性机构的“天性”——不管是寿险公司还是银行。任何资本金要求，都无法真正保护你免于一场“真实的挤兑”（a real run）。我的意思是：如果你的负债几乎都是“当天就要兑付”的（virtually that day），或者我换句话说，几乎所有负债都要在当天兑付，那你就不可能经营一家金融机构，还能为这种情况做好准备。也正因如此，我们才需要 Fed（美联储）和 FDIC（联邦存款保险公司）。你扛不住挤兑。假设没有 FDIC 和 Fed：即使你是镇上资本最稳健的银行——比如你资本金 10%，而我的银行只有 5%——如果我雇 50 个人去你的银行门口排队站着，你也会先倒下。等他们把你弄倒了，接着就会来弄倒我——这就是为什么我们不会允许那种事情发生，因为你无法把“火”控制在隔壁那家银行。所以你扛不住挤兑，你就需要美联储和 FDIC。就算像 Northern Rock 那样，英国政府站出来说“我们担保一切”，银行门口照样排长队。人一旦害怕，就是真的害怕。而且如果你的存款没有保险，你看到你存钱的那家银行门口排队——那就去排队（笑）。必要的话，你可以从排在最前面那个人手里“买个位置”（买号）。甚至就算你是在另一家银行，你也应该去那家银行排队，把你的“疯钱”（mad money）取出来塞到床垫下面。只要没有罚金，你一周后再把钱存回去也行——那你为什么不这么做呢？正因如此我们需要 Fed 和 FDIC。我认为 FDIC 和 Social Security（社会保障）是 1930 年代带来的两项最重要的东西。这个体系需要 FDIC。

I warn our managers against it all the time. If anybody comes to me and says, “We want to do this because the other guy is doing it,” I say, “Go back to square one and come up with a better reason.” But human nature is such that you do want to do what others are doing.

我一直在提醒我们的经理们要防这件事。只要有人来跟我说：“我们想这么做，因为别人也在这么做。”我就会说：“回到起点重新想，找一个更好的理由。”但人性就是这样——你就是会想去做别人正在做的事。

One time, I was at a directors meeting where a leading property casualty insurance manager — a very well-known guy — was making a presentation to buy a life insurance company. He was going through all these kind of silly reasons why they should do it and he realized that the crowd was kind of catching onto the fact that his reasons weren’t too good, so finally he just threw up his hands and said, “All the other kids have one!” Basically, there’s a lot of business decisions made because all the other kids have one. (Laughs)

有一次，我在一场董事会会议上，一位顶尖的财产险（property casualty）保险经理——非常有名的人——正在做一个收购寿险公司的提案。他罗列了一堆有点可笑的理由，解释为什么他们应该这么做；他也意识到大家开始看出来这些理由并不怎么站得住脚，所以最后他干脆一摊手，说：“别的小孩都有一个！”基本上，很多商业决策就是因为“别的小孩都有一个”。（笑）

SRTs

Another theme of this column is that banks don’t have any money. Oh, not literally; I’m partly kidding about this one too. But I have argued that, between stricter bank capital regulation and the rise of giant alternative asset managers with huge pots of money to put to work, banks are just less likely to make and hold loans than they used to be. In the olden days, a fairly standard model was “you go to a bank for a loan, and the bank gives you the loan, and if you don’t pay it back then the bank loses money.”

本专栏的另一个主题是银行没有钱。哦，不是字面意义上的；我也有点开玩笑。但我认为，由于更严格的银行资本监管以及拥有巨额资金可供运作的巨型另类资产管理公司的崛起，银行如今不太可能像过去那样发放和持有贷款。过去，一个相当标准的模式是“你去银行贷款，银行给你贷款，如果你不还钱，银行就亏钱。”

In modern banking, it is becoming more common for the model to be “you go to a bank for a loan, and the bank goes to an investor to get the money,3 and the bank lends you the money, and if you don’t pay it back then the investor loses the money.” The bank, in this model, is increasingly a sales network; it is in the business of having a lot of bankers who cover a lot of companies and can originate loans, but its balance sheet is precious, and it will try to find someone else to actually put up the money.

在现代银行业中，“你向银行贷款，银行向投资者筹集资金，然后银行把钱借给你，如果你不还钱，投资者就会亏钱”这种模式变得越来越普遍。在这种模式下，银行越来越像一个销售网络；它的业务是拥有大量银行家，他们覆盖许多公司并能发起贷款，但其资产负债表十分宝贵，因此会尽量寻找其他人来实际提供资金。

In some ways this model is obviously safer than the traditional model: Banks are largely funded with short-term leverage from depositors, so they are at risk of bank runs. Private credit firms and other new alternative lenders are largely funded with long-term locked-up equity capital from big investors (insurance companies, endowments) with long time horizons, so they can more safely bear the credit risk of the banks’ loans. It is a move toward narrower banking.

在某些方面，这种模式显然比传统模式更安全：银行主要依赖存款人的短期杠杆融资，因此面临银行挤兑的风险。私人信贷公司和其他新型替代贷款机构主要依赖大投资者（保险公司、捐赠基金）提供的长期封闭股本资金，这些投资者的投资期限较长，因此可以更安全地承担银行贷款的信用风险。这是一种向窄银行模式发展的趋势。

On the other hand, there is an obvious problem with this model, one that you might remember from 2008. It is moral hazard. If a bank (1) makes loans and then (2) loses money if they don’t get paid back, it will try very hard to make loans that will get paid back. If a bank (1) makes loans and then (2) sells them to someone else, who will lose money if they don’t get paid back, it will try less hard. It will still try! It is good for the bank’s long-term business to make good loans, so it can keep selling them to willing buyers. It’s just less important for the loans to all be good, if the buyers take the losses.

另一方面，这种模式存在一个明显的问题，你可能还记得 2008 年的情况。这个问题就是道德风险。如果一家银行（1）发放贷款，然后（2）如果贷款无法偿还就会亏损，那么它会非常努力地确保贷款能够被偿还。如果一家银行（1）发放贷款，然后（2）将其出售给其他人，而如果贷款无法偿还，亏损由其他人承担，那么它的努力程度就会降低。它仍然会努力！为了银行的长期业务，它仍然需要发放优质贷款，以便能够继续将其出售给愿意购买的买家。只是，如果买家承担损失，那么所有贷款都必须是优质贷款的必要性就会降低。

Here are Bloomberg’s Carmen Arroyo, Laura Noonan and Sridhar Natarajan on SRTs4:

以下是彭博社的 Carmen Arroyo、Laura Noonan 和 Sridhar Natarajan 关于 SRTs4 的报道：

SRTs in the US are relatively new and very hot:

SRT 在美国相对较新且非常热门

If your model is roughly “banks have the sales force to make loans, and investors have the money to take the risk,” who is in charge of underwriting the loans? Who gets to decide which loans are a good credit risk? One obvious answer is “the banks, since they are the ones dealing with the borrowers”; the other obvious answer is “the investors, since they are the ones on the hook for bad credit decisions.” A reasonable answer — Diameter’s answer — is “both of them,” but a plausible, “quantitative” answer is “neither of them.”

如果你的模型大致是“银行拥有发放贷款的销售团队，而投资者拥有承担风险的资金”，那么谁负责贷款的承销？谁来决定哪些贷款是良好的信用风险？一个显而易见的答案是“银行，因为他们直接与借款人打交道”；另一个显而易见的答案是“投资者，因为他们要承担信用决策失误的后果。” 一个合理的答案——Diameter 的答案——是“两者都是”，但一个看似合理的“量化”答案是“两者都不是。”

I am exaggerating? A little? But we have talked about this theme a lot, because in 2023 there was a mini-crisis at US regional banks. The quick story of the crisis was that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates rapidly, and a lot of depositors took their money out of US regional banks and put it elsewhere. (Other banks, Treasury bills, money market funds, etc.) The banks had had a lot of deposits on which they paid roughly zero interest, which provided them funding that was cheap and that they thought was pretty stable. But it turned out not to be stable: The deposits left, and the banks mostly had to replace their deposits with more expensive money, undermining their business model and occasionally leading to bank failures.

我有些夸张？有一点？但我们已经多次讨论过这个主题，因为在 2023 年，美国地区银行发生了一次小型危机。危机的简要情况是，美联储迅速提高了利率，许多储户将他们的钱从美国地区银行取出并存到其他地方。（其他银行、国库券、货币市场基金等）这些银行拥有大量存款，几乎不支付利息，这为它们提供了廉价且被认为相当稳定的资金。但事实证明这并不稳定：存款流失，银行大多不得不以更高成本的资金替换存款，削弱了它们的商业模式，偶尔导致银行倒闭。

My explanation of this crisis was that banks, and bank regulators, had grown accustomed to a model in which depositors basically don’t pay attention to interest rates. The 2023 crisis was a surprise because deposits turned out to be less stable than everyone thought. Why deposits turned out to be unstable is an interesting question, and we have discussed some speculative explanations. “Online banking makes it easier to move your deposits from one bank to another, and social media makes news travel faster” is a popular set of explanations. (“Game’s the same, just got more fierce,” as the vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. put it.) In traditional theory, depositors don’t pay attention to interest rates on bank accounts because it is hard to pay attention to that, and hard to move your money even if you do; in modern online life those things are easier, so depositors might pay more attention.

我对这场危机的解释是，银行和银行监管机构已经习惯了一种模式，即储户基本上不关注利率。2023 年的危机令人惊讶，因为存款比大家想象的要不稳定。为什么存款会变得不稳定是一个有趣的问题，我们已经讨论了一些推测性的解释。“网上银行使得将存款从一个银行转移到另一个银行变得更容易，社交媒体使得新闻传播得更快”是一套流行的解释。（“游戏规则没变，只是变得更激烈了，”正如联邦存款保险公司副主席所说。）在传统理论中，储户不关注银行账户的利率，因为关注这些很难，即使关注了也很难转移资金；在现代在线生活中，这些事情变得更容易，所以储户可能会更加关注。

Here is a recent paper by Itamar Drechsler, Alexi Savov, Philipp Schnabl and Olivier Wang on “Deposit Franchise Runs,” which begins with an explanation of the basic model of banking:

这是 Itamar Drechsler、Alexi Savov、Philipp Schnabl 和 Olivier Wang 最近发表的一篇关于“存款特许经营挤兑”的论文，开篇解释了银行业的基本模型：

There is one theoretical way to get rid of the problem entirely: You could separate the business of taking deposits from the business of making loans. Some companies — call them “narrow banks” — could be in the business of taking deposits and just holding onto them, in literal piles of cash or more plausibly in the form of electronic reserves at the Federal Reserve. Other companies — call them “loan companies” — could be in the business of making loans, but not using deposits as funding. Those companies could raise funds from investors who knowingly take the risk of making loans and lock up their money for the long term. Deposits would be safe, loan funds would not be subject to runs, and the central risk would be removed from banking.

有一种理论上的方法可以彻底解决这个问题：你可以将吸收存款的业务与发放贷款的业务分开。一些公司——称之为“狭义银行”——可以专注于吸收存款并仅仅持有这些存款，可能是以现金堆积的形式，或者更可能是以联邦储备银行的电子准备金形式存在。其他公司——称之为“贷款公司”——可以专注于发放贷款，但不使用存款作为资金来源。这些公司可以从投资者那里筹集资金，投资者明知贷款存在风险并愿意长期锁定资金。存款将是安全的，贷款资金不会面临挤兑，银行业的核心风险将被消除。

This is a very old idea that has gotten a lot of interest from academics, but it is controversial. It is possible that the central risk of banking — taking safe deposits and using them to make risky loans — might be desirable, that separating the businesses might be bad. I often quote a 2011 Steve Randy Waldman post at Interfluidity:

这是一个非常古老的想法，受到了许多学者的关注，但也存在争议。银行业的核心风险——拿安全的存款去发放高风险贷款——可能是有益的，分开这两种业务可能是不利的。我经常引用 2011 年 Steve Randy Waldman 在 Interfluidity 上的一篇文章：

If you tell people “put your money in the bank, where you can get it out anytime, guaranteed by the government,” (1) they will do it and (2) the bank can use the money to make risky loans to entrepreneurs and young home-buyers. If you tell people “put your money in a fund to make risky loans to entrepreneurs and young home-buyers,” they might just not do it; credit and the economy would contract. Banks take money from savers who don’t want to take risks, and use it to fund risky projects, a pro-social sleight of hand. Waldman:

如果你告诉人们“把钱存进银行，随时可以取出，且由政府担保”，(1) 他们会照做，(2) 银行可以用这些钱向创业者和年轻购房者发放高风险贷款。如果你告诉人们“把钱投入一个基金，用来向创业者和年轻购房者发放高风险贷款”，他们可能根本不会这么做；信贷和经济都会收缩。银行从不愿冒险的储户那里拿钱，用来资助高风险项目，这是一种利社会的巧妙手法。沃尔德曼说：

That’s what I thought a few years ago. It also seems to be roughly what the US Federal Reserve thinks. In 2018, an entity called TNB USA Inc. tried to open a narrow bank. It applied for an account at the Fed, where it would just park its depositors’ money. It wouldn’t make any loans or investments; all the money would just sit at the Fed, which pays interest on reserves. The Fed dragged its feet on opening an account for TNB, and explained its reasoning 2019, arguing that “narrowly focused depository institutions” like TNB, which “hold a very large proportion of their assets in the form of balances at Reserve Banks,” could “have the potential to complicate the implementation of monetary policy” and “disrupt financial intermediation in ways that are hard to anticipate.”

几年前我也是这么想的。美国联邦储备委员会似乎也大致持相同看法。2018 年，一个名为 TNB USA Inc.的实体试图开设一家狭义银行。它申请在联储开设账户，只是将存款人的资金存放在那里。它不会发放任何贷款或进行投资；所有资金都将存放在联储，联储会对准备金支付利息。联储在为 TNB 开设账户的问题上拖延，并在 2019 年解释了其理由，认为“像 TNB 这样的‘狭义存款机构’，其‘大部分资产以联储银行余额的形式持有’，可能‘会对货币政策的实施造成复杂影响’并且‘以难以预料的方式扰乱金融中介’。”

Again, in 2018 and 2019, this struck me as largely correct: If everyone could have totally safe, Fed-backed, interest-paying deposits, surely there would be less demand for bank deposits, fewer loans and less financial intermediation.

同样，在 2018 年和 2019 年，我认为这在很大程度上是正确的：如果每个人都能拥有完全安全、由联储支持且支付利息的存款，肯定会减少对银行存款的需求，贷款减少，金融中介也会减少。

But since then it does seem that banking has gotten narrower. On the deposit side, you kind of can get totally safe deposits. Treasury money market funds don’t quite park their cash at the Fed and earn interest, but they get pretty close, investing in short-term Treasury securities and reverse repos at the Fed. If you don’t like the risk of depositing money at a bank — and after the Silicon Valley Bank run in 2023, many people don’t — you can get much closer to narrow banking via money market funds. And on the lending side, the enormous boom in private credit proves that in fact there is a ton of demand from investors who want to knowingly take credit risk. You can get lots of loans — risky leveraged buyout loans, but also consumer loans and mortgages — without the placebo of banking.

但从那时起，银行业务似乎变得更狭窄了。在存款方面，你可以获得完全安全的存款。国债货币市场基金虽然不能将现金完全存放在美联储并赚取利息，但它们非常接近，通过投资短期国债证券和美联储的逆回购操作实现。如果你不喜欢将钱存入银行的风险——在 2023 年硅谷银行挤兑事件之后，很多人都不喜欢——你可以通过货币市场基金更接近狭义银行业务。在贷款方面，私人信贷的巨大繁荣证明，实际上有大量投资者愿意有意识地承担信用风险。你可以获得大量贷款——风险较高的杠杆收购贷款，也有消费贷款和抵押贷款——而无需银行的“安慰剂”。

So banking is getting narrower, though it is not yet narrow in any absolute sense. Private credit is still much smaller than the banking system, and private credit firms themselves often borrow from banks to increase their ability to make loans. The Fed’s 2019 objections to narrow banking still apply; the Fed formally turned down TNB’s account application only last year.

因此，银行业务确实变得更狭窄了，尽管在任何绝对意义上还不算狭窄。私人信贷仍远小于银行系统，私人信贷公司本身也经常从银行借款以增强其放贷能力。美联储 2019 年对狭义银行业务的反对意见仍然适用；美联储直到去年才正式拒绝了 TNB 的账户申请。

But narrow banking pops up elsewhere. One important modern form is stablecoins. A stablecoin is a crypto form of banking: You deposit dollars with a stablecoin issuer, it gives you back tokens entitling you to get your dollars back, and meanwhile it does whatever it wants with the dollars. In the unregulated early days of crypto, “whatever it wants” could be quite spicy indeed, but these days stablecoins are a big business and there is something of a norm of parking the deposits in very safe short-term dollar-denominated assets, ideally Treasury bills or reverse repos or a BlackRock money market fund. If you launched a new stablecoin today and said “we will take your dollars and use them to make loans to emerging crypto entrepreneurs,” you’d have a hard time competing with the big incumbent stablecoins that say “we will take your dollars and use them to buy Treasury bills.” (Especially if, like most stablecoins, you didn’t pay interest.)

但狭义银行业务在其他地方也出现。一种重要的现代形式是稳定币。稳定币是一种加密形式的银行业务：你将美元存入稳定币发行方，他们会给你返还代币，赋予你取回美元的权利，同时他们会用这些美元做任何他们想做的事情。在加密货币早期不受监管的时代，“任何他们想做的事情”可能相当激进，但如今稳定币已成为一项大业务，且普遍的做法是将存款停放在非常安全的短期美元计价资产中，理想情况下是国库券、逆回购或贝莱德货币市场基金。如果你今天推出一个新的稳定币，并说“我们将拿你的美元去向新兴的加密创业者发放贷款”，你将很难与那些说“我们将拿你的美元去购买国库券”的大型现有稳定币竞争。（尤其是如果你像大多数稳定币一样不支付利息的话。）

One flavor of this is “central bank digital currency,” which means roughly “a stablecoin run by the Fed and backed directly by Fed deposits.” And my impression is that the Fed does not like the idea of a CBDC, in part for these sorts of financial-intermediation concerns. More generally, my impression is that the Fed does not want a world in which stablecoins are (1) a dominant form of digital money and (2) narrow banking. That is a world in which the alchemy of banking is harder to achieve.

其中一种形式是“中央银行数字货币”，大致意思是“由美联储运营并直接由美联储存款支持的稳定币”。我的印象是，美联储不喜欢 CBDC 的想法，部分原因是出于对金融中介的担忧。更广泛地说，我的印象是，美联储不希望出现这样一个世界：稳定币成为（1）主导的数字货币形式，且（2）是狭义银行业务。那将是一个银行炼金术更难实现的世界。

On the other hand, do you want a world in which stablecoins are (1) a dominant form of digital money and (2) not narrow banking? Broad banking? Where the stablecoin issuers do take dollars and use them to make loans to emerging crypto entrepreneurs? What about a world where the stablecoin issuers take dollars and use them to make, you know, leveraged buyout loans, or consumer loans, or home mortgages? Maybe that’s fine? Maybe that’s just banking? Maybe we can just recreate the whole banking system but in crypto?

另一方面，你想要一个稳定币成为（1）主导的数字货币形式且（2）不是狭义银行业务的世界吗？广义银行业务？在这个世界里，稳定币发行者会拿美元去向新兴的加密创业者发放贷款？那如果稳定币发行者拿美元去发杠杆收购贷款、消费贷款或住房抵押贷款呢？也许这没问题？也许这就是银行业务？也许我们可以在加密领域重新创造整个银行系统？

Anyway the Wall Street Journal reports:

无论如何，《华尔街日报》报道：

The obvious story here is that any crypto firm that obtains a bank charter would be subject to stricter oversight of its know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering programs, its capital, its information security, etc., all the stuff that crypto firms sometimes get in trouble for.

显而易见的故事是，任何获得银行执照的加密公司都将受到更严格的客户身份识别和反洗钱程序、资本、信息安全等方面的监管，所有这些都是加密公司有时会遇到麻烦的地方。

But the weirder story here is: If you are a crypto firm that wants a bank charter, do you have to do lending? If you are a stablecoin issuer whose entire business is (1) taking deposits and (2) parking those deposits in Treasury bills, do bank regulators want to give you a charter? Aren’t bank charters for banks that do financial intermediation? Will there be pressure for stablecoin issuers to become real banks, to take deposits and use them to fund loans? Will crypto companies that want to become banks have to be regular banks, not narrow ones?

但更奇怪的故事是：如果你是一家想要银行执照的加密公司，你必须进行贷款业务吗？如果你是一家稳定币发行商，其整个业务是（1）接受存款和（2）将这些存款投资于国债，银行监管机构会愿意给你发放执照吗？银行执照难道不是给那些从事金融中介业务的银行的吗？是否会有压力促使稳定币发行商成为真正的银行，接受存款并用这些存款发放贷款？想成为银行的加密公司是否必须成为普通银行，而不是狭义银行？

This is a little funny because crypto is to some extent a reaction against traditional banking. Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin in part in disgust at the 2008 financial crisis. And cryptocurrencies are distinct from dollars in that a dollar fundamentally is a debt obligation of a bank, while a Bitcoin fundamentally isn’t; crypto is a form of non-debt money, a way to have money and payments and bank accounts without traditional banking. I wrote in 2023 that crypto “to some extent started as a backlash to fractional reserve banking and the shadow banking crisis of 2008, and by last year had matured to the point that it recreated both fractional reserve banking (but without regulation!) and a 2008-style shadow banking crisis.” But that is just the beginning of the story. Perhaps the future is that crypto will fully recreate normal banking, including bank regulation.

这有点好笑，因为加密货币在某种程度上是对传统银行业的反应。中本聪发明比特币，部分原因是对 2008 年金融危机的反感。加密货币与美元不同，美元本质上是银行的债务义务，而比特币本质上不是；加密货币是一种非债务货币，是一种无需传统银行即可拥有货币、支付和银行账户的方式。我在 2023 年写道，加密货币“在某种程度上起初是对 2008 年部分准备金银行和影子银行危机的反弹，到去年已经成熟到重新创造了部分准备金银行（但没有监管！）和 2008 年式的影子银行危机。”但这只是故事的开始。也许未来加密货币将完全重塑正常银行体系，包括银行监管。