美国计算机科学家拉尔夫·默克尔对比特币的评价

Ralph_Merkle （公钥密码学的奠基人之一，加密哈希算法的作者）对比特币的一段评价：

Bitcoin is the first example of a new form of life.

It lives and breathes on the internet.

It lives because it can pay people to keep it alive.

It lives because it performs a useful service that people will pay it to perform.

It lives because anyone, anywhere, can run a copy of its code.

It lives because all the running copies are constantly talking to each other.

It lives because if any one copy is corrupted it is discarded, quickly and without any fuss or muss.It lives because it is radically transparent: anyone can see its code and see exactly what it does.

It can’t be changed. It can’t be argued with. It can’t be tampered with.

It can’t be corrupted. It can’t be stopped.

It can’t even be interrupted.If nuclear war destroyed half of our planet, it would continue to live, uncorrupted. It would continue to offer its services.

It would continue to pay people to keep it alive.The only way to shut it down is to kill every server that hosts it. Which is hard, because a lot of servers host it, in a lot of countries, and a lot of people want to use it.Realistically, the only way to kill it is to make the service it offers so useless and obsolete that no one wants to use it.

So obsolete that no one wants to pay for it. No one wants to host it. Then it will have no money to pay anyone. Then it will starve to death.But as long as there are people who want to use it, it’s very hard to kill, or corrupt, or stop, or interrupt.

翻译成中文：

比特币是新生命形式的第一个例子。

它在互联网上生长和呼吸。

它存在，因为它能支付人们来保持自己的生存。

它存在，因为它提供一项有用的服务，人们愿意为此支付。

它存在，因为任何人在任何地方都可以运行其代码的副本。

它存在，因为所有运行的副本都在不断地彼此交流。 它存在，因为如果任何一个副本被损坏，它会被迅速丢弃，而不会有任何骚动。

它存在，因为它具有极大的透明度：任何人都可以查看它的代码并准确了解其功能。

它无法改变。它无法辩驳。

它无法被篡改。它无法被腐化。

它无法被停止。甚至无法被中断。

即使核战争摧毁了地球的一半，它仍将继续存在，毫不受损。

它将继续提供服务。

它将继续支付人们来保持自己的生存。 唯一关闭它的方法是关闭托管它的每个服务器。这很困难，因为许多服务器在许多国家托管它，而且许多人想要使用它。

实际上，唯一摧毁它的方法是使其提供的服务变得无用和过时，以至于没有人想使用它。过时到没有人愿意为它付费。没有人想托管它。然后它将没有资金支付任何人。然后它将饿死。

但只要有人想使用它，要想关闭它，或腐化它，或停止它，或中断它都是非常困难的。