The technology likely to have the greatest impact on the next few decades has arrived.
有可能在未来几十年带来巨大影响的科技，已经到来了。
And it's not social media. It's not big data.
并不是社交媒体，也不是大数据，
It's not robotics. It's not even AI.
也不是机器人科学，甚至也不是人工智能。
You'll be surprised to learn that it's the underlying technology of digital currencies like Bitcoin.
你会惊讶地了解到，它是比特币等数字货币的技术基础，
It's called the blockchain. Blockchain.
它叫做区块链。
Now, it's not the most sonorous word in the world,
它不是世界上最华丽的词汇，
but I believe that this is now the next generation of the internet,
但是我坚信，它将是下一代互联网，
and that it holds vast promise for every business, every society and for all of you, individually.
并且给每一次贸易，每一个社会，每一个人带来光明前景。
You know, for the past few decades, we've had the internet of information.
过去的几十年里，我们迎来了互联网的信息时代。
And when I send you an email or a PowerPoint file or something,
当我向你发送一封电子邮件或一份PPT文件或者其他的时候，
I'm actually not sending you the original, I'm sending you a copy.
实际上我发送的并不是原始文件，我发送的是拷贝的副本。
And that's great. This is democratized information.
那可真棒。这是民主化的信息时代。
But when it comes to assets -- things like money,
但是如果牵涉到资产的话，比如说金钱，
financial assets like stocks and bonds, loyalty points, intellectual property,
股票及债权等金融资产，股份，知识产权，
music, art, a vote, carbon credit and other assets -- sending you a copy is a really bad idea.
音乐，艺术，一张选票，碳信用额等其他资产，发送一份副本真是个糟糕主意。
If I send you 100 dollars,
如果我给了你100美元，
it's really important that I don't still have the money -- and that I can't send it to you.
我不再拥有这笔钱是很重要的。并且我不能再次发送。
This has been called the "double-spend" problem by cryptographers for a long time.
这已经被密码专家叫做“二次消费”问题很久了。
