Beeple 的 NFT 派对：加密货币欢呼与监管困境的故事

去年 11 月，艺术家 Beeple 举办了一场美国大选之夜派对，其中包括一场吃热狗比赛，屏幕上展示着他顽皮的政治形象，演员们戴着金正恩、埃隆·马斯克等政治和科技领导人的不可思议的橡胶面具。两大党的总统候选人——卡马拉·哈里斯和唐纳德·特朗普。

The digital artist Beeple became a poster boy for crypto in 2021, when Christie’s sold his NFT (non-fungible token) artwork Everyday: The First 5,000 Days for a record-breaking $69.3m.

2021 年，数字艺术家 Beeple 成为加密货币的代言人，佳士得拍卖行以创纪录的 6,930 万美元出售了他的 NFT（不可替代代币）艺术品《Everyday: The First 5,000 Days》。

The sale epitomised the crypto community’s efforts to disrupt the art market, introducing new types of transactions, artists and behaviour. But Beeple’s crypto ties also hinted at a darker side to the NFT boom.

此次拍卖集中体现了加密货币社区为颠覆艺术市场所做的努力，引入了新的交易类型、艺术家和行为。但 Beeple 与加密货币的联系也暗示了 NFT 繁荣的阴暗面。

While right-wing figures such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk often appear in Beeple’s irreverent, vulgar caricatures, the artist and his election party guests exploded into cheers when Trump’s victory was announced.

虽然唐纳德·特朗普和埃隆·马斯克等右翼人物经常出现在毕普尔不敬、粗俗的漫画中，但当特朗普获胜的消息宣布时，这位艺术家和他的选举派对嘉宾爆发出欢呼声。

Their euphoria reflected the cryptocurrency community’s belief that it will enjoy a more favourable regulatory climate under a second Trump term.

他们的兴奋反映了加密货币社区的信念，即在特朗普第二任期内，它将享受到更有利的监管环境。

The crypto industry’s leading Super Pacs (political action committees) poured more than $130m into Trump’s campaign, while Gary Gensler, the current chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), became persona non grata for his enforcement of regulation against crypto.

加密货币行业领先的超级政治行动委员会 (Super Pacs) 为特朗普的竞选活动投入了超过 1.3 亿美元，而现任证券交易委员会 (SEC) 主席加里·詹斯勒 (Gary Gensler) 因其对加密货币的监管而成为不受欢迎的人物。

Binance, Coinbase and other crypto exchanges had sustained major losses as the SEC enforced existing laws rather than developing a new regulatory framework that made more exceptions for cryptocurrencies.

由于 SEC 执行现有法律，而不是制定新的监管框架，为加密货币提供更多例外，币安、Coinbase 和其他加密货币交易所蒙受了重大损失。

After Trump’s victory, the price of ethereum—the cryptocurrency that NFTs are typically traded in—and bitcoin surged. Trump has nominated Paul Atkins, a cryptocurrency advocate, to run the SEC, and picked David Sacks, a former PayPal executive, for the new position of crypto and artificial intelligence czar.

特朗普获胜后，以太坊（NFT 通常交易的加密货币）和比特币的价格飙升。特朗普提名加密货币倡导者保罗·阿特金斯 (Paul Atkins) 来管理 SEC，并选择 PayPal 前高管大卫·萨克斯 (David Sacks) 担任加密货币和人工智能沙皇的新职位。

Meanwhile Musk, the world’s richest man and backer of the cryptocurrency dogecoin, will co-direct the new Department of Government Efficiency (or Doge).

与此同时，世界首富和加密货币狗狗币的支持者马斯克将共同领导新成立的政府效率部（或Doge）。

The art market’s NFT craze in 2021 was preceded by a crypto bull run and heralded by a massive purchase by a crypto entrepreneur.

2021 年艺术市场的 NFT 热潮先于加密货币牛市，并以加密货币企业家的大规模购买为先兆。

One might reasonably expect a second-wave NFT boom is on its way. But some experts believe an anticipated lack of regulatory enforcement in the crypto sector during Trump’s second term could kill off NFTs entirely.

人们可以合理地预期第二波 NFT 热潮即将到来。但一些专家认为，预计特朗普第二任期内加密行业缺乏监管执法可能会彻底消灭 NFT。

Rohan Grey, a professor at Willa­mette University and the research director of the Digital Fiat Currency Institute, says the NFT market reached its previous, dizzying heights only because regulation targeted other crypto assets—namely, initial coin offerings (ICOs).

威拉米特大学教授、数字法定货币研究所研究主任罗汉·格雷 (Rohan Grey) 表示，NFT 市场之所以达到之前令人眼花缭乱的高度，只是因为监管针对的是其他加密资产，即首次代币发行 (ICO)。

An ICO is a form of funding through which a company issues a crypto-token that represents a stake in a company or project to interested investors.

ICO 是一种融资形式，公司通过该形式向感兴趣的投资者发行代表公司或项目股权的加密代币。

In 2017, ICOs exploded in popularity as start-ups and app developers began raising hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of coins to fund their projects.

2017 年，随着初创企业和应用程序开发商开始筹集价值数亿美元的代币来资助他们的项目，ICO 迅速流行。

Grey says: “It was basically issuing shares without going through the share registration process, and it was so scammy that it was giving more established crypto money a bad name.

格雷说：“它基本上是在不经过股票注册程序的情况下发行股票，而且它是如此的诈骗，以至于给更成熟的加密货币带来了坏名声。

“Then came the regulatory pushback—which isn’t surprising considering that no one seemed to come up with a name that didn’t sound like IPO (initial public offering), which is, of course, regulated by the SEC. That’s when NFTs started coming up as a workaround.”

“随后出现了监管阻力——考虑到似乎没有人想出一个听起来不像 IPO（首次公开募股）的名字，这并不奇怪，当然，IPO 是受 SEC 监管的。就在那时，NFT 开始作为一种解决方法出现。”

Unlike cryptocoins, NFTs are ‘non-fungible’—that is, unique. If you put 100 NFTs in a row, each one is different, whereas all cryptocoins are the same.

与加密货币不同，NFT 是“不可替代的”——也就是说，是独一无二的。如果将 100 个 NFT 排成一排，每个 NFT 都是不同的，而所有加密货币都是相同的。

Grey says: “So the logic went, ‘If we were doing shares, then all the shares would look the same, but each of these shares is unique.’”

格雷说：“所以逻辑是，‘如果我们做股票，那么所有的股票看起来都是一样的，但每一个股票都是独一无二的。’”

By 2019, regulation and enforcement had ripened, with the SEC issuing guidance on when a digital asset qualifies as an investment contract and is therefore a security.

到 2019 年，监管和执法已经成熟，美国证券交易委员会 (SEC) 发布了关于数字资产何时符合投资合同并因此成为证券的指南。

The same year, the SEC fined Block.one, a blockchain company, $24m after it had raised billions through an ICO. A year later, the NFT market began to pick up steam.

同年，区块链公司 Block.one 通过 ICO 筹集了数十亿美元资金后，美国证券交易委员会对其处以 2400 万美元的罚款。一年后，NFT 市场开始加速发展。

Another core feature of NFTs—their artistic features—will make them even more difficult for the SEC to regulate.

NFT 的另一个核心特征——艺术特征——将使 SEC 监管变得更加困难。

“There’s a content, meaning and expressive speech element to NFTs that isn’t present in other forms of the crypto market,” says Brian Frye, an artist and law professor at the University of Kentucky who focuses on intellectual property.

“NFT 具有其他形式的加密货币市场所不具备的内容、意义和表达性言论元素，”专注于知识产权的肯塔基大学艺术家兼法学教授 Brian Frye 表示。

“The NFT market has some benefits to the crypto world from a regulatory standpoint in so far as it’s a different group of people asserting different kinds of interests. This potentially gives the crypto crowd a lever that the regular kind of crypto market in currencies, coins and exchanges don’t necessarily get.”

“从监管的角度来看，NFT 市场对加密世界有一些好处，因为不同的人群主张不同的利益。这可能为加密货币人群提供常规加密货币市场、硬币和交易所不一定能获得的杠杆。”

But if NFTs were useful to the crypto industry specifically because they were difficult to regulate, their use-case may be about to expire.

但如果 NFT 对加密行业有用，特别是因为它们难以监管，那么它们的用例可能即将到期。

Under Trump, the industry is anticipating an SEC that will be unmotivated to enforce existing regulatory frameworks at all.

在特朗普的领导下，业界预计美国证券交易委员会将根本没有动力执行现有的监管框架。

Trump himself has sold four series of NFTs, the latest of which came out last August, raising millions of dollars for his campaign.

特朗普本人已出售了四个系列的 NFT，其中最新的一个于去年 8 月推出，为他的竞选活动筹集了数百万美元。

One of the NFTs features an image of Trump dressed as a

其中一张 NFT 上有一张特朗普打扮成