By Bitcoin 杂志 - 1 年前 - 阅读时间：12 分钟
Bitcoin 和伯克希尔哈撒韦有着相似的理念
When analyzing Berkshire Hathaway, much of the company’s success stems from philosophical and structural reasons that are exactly shared by Bitcoin.
This is an opinion editorial by Craig Buddo, a freelance writer specializing in finance and a contributor at Bitcoin 杂志。
When not scrolling through his Rolodex of insults to level at Bitcoin, Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s vice chairman and Warren Buffett’s confidant, is fond of invoking “mental models” espoused by the German mathematician, Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. Sounds intimidating, but it’s really quite straightforward. This simply states that many complex problems are best approached by inverting them, by coming at them backward. As Munger explains it:
“颠倒，总是颠倒：把情况或问题颠倒过来。 向后看。 如果我们所有的计划都出错了怎么办？ 我们不想去哪里，你怎么去那里？ 与其寻找成功，不如列出如何失败……告诉我我会死在哪里，也就是说，我不会去那里。” — 查理芒格
保持那个想法。
As someone who became fascinated with the stock market and value investing after the Global Financial Crisis, bitcoin only came into hard focus for me when I started to think about it as though it were a stock. I believe now it’s much more profound than that, but it’s still how I frame my ownership some good way down the rabbit hole.
And though it would assuredly make its CEO projectile spray his Cherry Coke across the room and make its vice chairman swivel his one good eye to the heavens, it seems that the true analog to bitcoin in the public markets is, in fact, Berkshire itself.
Turn Berkshire upside down and you may be left with the thought that its phenomenal success stems in large part from philosophical and structural reasons that are exactly shared by Bitcoin, and that these will continue to propel both into the future.
权力下放
Buffett’s stock picking in the public markets draws a lot of attention, but it’s really Berkshire’s wholly acquired portfolio of companies that make it so interesting. Compared to the rest of corporate America, Berkshire is radically decentralized. At last count, it owned 63 subsidiary companies spread over a very broad range of industries, including insurance, energy, railways, furniture and jewelry stores, mobile home manufacturers, private jet leasing and a plethora of other companies making and selling everything from batteries and underwear to business data, bricks and ice cream.
不过，独特的是，一旦一家公司达到了收购标准，他们基本上会被告知要照原样继续经营（伯克希尔不会投资于扭亏为盈的故事，因此其收购的公司已经是成功的企业）。 他们保留自主权，使用现有的人员和系统，按照他们认为合适的方式开展业务。 伯克希尔在公司中扮演的角色一直是 描述 作为“你能想象到的最友好的银行家——没有干涉、合同、条件、契约、到期日或其他中介限制。” 这就是伯克希尔公司能够管理世界上最大的公司之一的方式，该公司总部只有大约 30 名员工，没有人力资源部门，甚至没有组织结构图。
再加上大量的现金及其公共股票投资（也多种多样，但主要集中在金融服务领域），经济、技术中断、丑闻或自然灾害可能不会出现永久性的转折，包括伯克希尔的死亡。它的创始人。 它的建造可以再使用一百年。
It’s not clear that Buffett intentionally set out to create a decentralized corporation (he’s referred to his acquisition strategy as “haphazard” and “serendipitous”), or if its advantages made themselves obvious over the decades. In contrast, the whole genesis of Bitcoin was to solve the problem of how to decentralize money and its audacious realization has given the world a transparent and self-policing global monetary network free from central authority.
信任
在“信任边际：伯克希尔商业模式，”伯克希尔的长期编年史家劳伦斯·A·坎宁安 (Lawrence A. Cunningham) 探讨了巴菲特与信任概念的关系，他称之为伯克希尔的“统一原则”。 世界上没有一家公司能像伯克希尔那样以同样的首要地位接近信任，也没有哪家公司的 CEO 可能更受信任。
最明显的是，信任体现在伯克希尔收购企业的直接方式上：没有投资银行家或金融中介机构（难以信任），没有恶意收购，没有重组。 一旦他们完成了尽职调查并建立了信任和诚信，这就是所有权的直接转移。 同样，企业的卖家，其中许多仍然由创始人经营，选择伯克希尔，因为他们相信伯克希尔是他们所建立的东西和在那里工作的个人的负责任管家。
巴菲特的年度股东信函通常是对他自己的失败和失误的坦率和坦率的评估。 这是一种非常强大但非常罕见的企业沟通方式，也是他在伯克希尔哈撒韦公司及其股东之间建立信任的主要方式之一。 他将股东视为企业中真正的合作伙伴，而他自己和伯克希尔董事会则是他们利益的值得信赖的管理者。 这被编入 伯克希尔的用户手册，一份 1996 年的文件，阐述了企业的经营理念。 它指出：
“我们不将公司本身视为我们商业资产的最终所有者，而是将公司视为我们的股东拥有资产的渠道。”
Berkshire does an end run around financial intermediaries with trust, integrity and raw economic power; Bitcoin does it with software. In a true stroke of inversion genius, Satoshi Nakamoto solved the issue of “所有必要的信任” in the fiat system by erasing its endlessly fallible human component. Instead, Bitcoin uses code to distribute the trust function among a huge network of computers, all of which must come to consensus before transactions can move forward and all of which are incentivized to guard against breaches of trust.
It isn’t a coincidence that Bitcoin was literally born out of the wreckage of the Global Financial Crisis, and that Berkshire came to perhaps its greatest prominence in the same historical moment, representing a bastion of trust and lender of last resort amid the reputational rubble.
激励
For both Berkshire and Bitcoin, sophisticated and rational incentive structures might be the subsurface “management principle” that has propelled each more than any other. In Bitcoin’s case, it’s programmatic proof-of-work incentives to both mine bitcoin based on diminishing but more valuable block rewards, and economic-interest incentives to secure the network.
激励措施在伯克希尔也有双重职责。 业务经理、公司高管和投资顾问与伯克希尔的股东保持一致，因为与直觉相反，他们获得的是工资和绩效奖金，而不是股票期权。
巴菲特对以股票薪酬奖励上市公司高级管理人员的做法感到厌烦，因为这种做法经常与实际业绩脱钩，倾向于鼓励短期主义并稀释现有股东。 然而，伯克希尔收购公司的高管和创始人通常被允许保留其原始业务的所有权比例，以激励“所有者”心态。
伯克希尔哈撒韦从未拆分其原始 A 股（迄今为止标准普尔 500 指数中最昂贵的股票）的原因也是基于激励，或者说是基于抑制。 在 1995 年发言时， 巴菲特解释 他的推理：
“我们希望吸引尽可能以投资为导向的股东，具有尽可能长远的眼光……[拥有更便宜、经过拆分调整的股票]……我们几乎可以肯定，我们将获得一个不会拥有的股东基础。我们现在拥有的复杂程度和目标与我们的同步。 而我们在伯克希尔股票中真正不需要的是更多的需求……我们不希望它卖得更高，除非内在价值增长。”
This shouldn’t be read as elitist: Around the same time, Buffett did create B shares of Berkshire stock when he saw unaffiliated financial firms begin to create (and charge high fees for) derivatives of the A shares to sell to small investors. Rather, it's a use of the stock price to reflect long-term real value and cement alignment.
An essential feature of bitcoin is, of course, its hard cap of 21 million coins. Buffett has progressively created a hard cap on Berkshire stock as well, knowing that good things happen when continued intrinsic growth meets a static share count. In the last few years, Buffett has viewed his own company as a prime acquisition target, ramping up share repurchases based on a value formula indicating it was cheap against the market.
文化塑造
Imagine Bitcoin without it’s army of evangelists, writers, podcasters, speakers and HODLers. It would be a hollowed-out transactional thing like owning silver or soybean futures. Instead, the protocol has inspired millions of people around the world to gather, contribute, support, argue and create. Its revolutionary software has been buoyed and made meaningful from the outset by the substantial culture that has grown around it. In its start-up years particularly, when there was little monetary value to the network, culture and community kept the experiment alive.
伯克希尔哈撒韦也有它的忠实拥护者，最引人注目的是每年在内布拉斯加州奥马哈总部举行的公司年度股东大会。 除了活动的乐趣和传统之外，巴菲特还意识到，在伯克希尔周围发展起来的文化以及对他作为领导者的信任是以他认为最理性的方式塑造公司的强大优势，而不是共识思维。 他能够召集大多数股东抵制支付股息的提议，拆分他的角色，改变薪酬结构，从能源股中剥离，并让自己提前退休。
由于其文化，伯克希尔拥有异常稳定的股权，尤其是与机构投资者和养老金计划相比，拥有大量长期个人持有者。 除了精心设计的公司结构外，它还使公司大部分时间都在运营，而不必担心激进主义或剥离或改变路线的压力。
教训
At the 2022 Berkshire meeting, Buffett again reiterated his view that bitcoin is worthless because it has no intrinsic value other than the potential to sell it to someone else for a higher price. Ric Edelman, founder of one of the largest financial advisory firms in the country and early Bitcoin advocate, takes on this argument in his recently published book “关于加密的真相。” 他指出，用于评估股票、债券和房地产等传统资产的模型不应应用于数字资产：
“That’s because digital assets lack the inputs that other asset classes have. That’s not a flaw of digital assets; what’s flawed is the belief that the absence of those inputs means bitcoin has no value.”
Edelman explains that bitcoin has an undeniable and triumphant record of over a decade of the market assigning a price to its value — and that price has risen by millions of percent — with massive demand-driven potential to continue outperforming.
But Berkshire and the way Buffett has shaped it do hold important lessons for bitcoin.
它在一个单一实体中令人放心地证明，去中心化原则和创新的信任和激励方法是世界一流的属性。 它表明，文化、教育和明显的主人翁意识是度过仓促市场的关键。
这是最近 计算 伯克希尔哈撒韦可能会损失其 99% 的价值，但它在 500 年的表现仍将优于标准普尔 1965 指数。要获得这些收益，尽管您必须经历九次衰退。 巴菲特说要重新定义你对股票的所有权，将它们视为实际企业的所有权百分比，而不是屏幕上跳来跳去的数字。
想象一下，您拥有一家成功的本地企业的被动股份，该企业多年来不断发展壮大：与大多数人买卖股票的方式相比，随着您家庭财富的增长，持有该企业数十年要容易得多？ 在经济低迷时期，您有机会通过继续购买其折扣股票来增加您的所有权百分比，因为您知道经济衰退是商业周期的正常部分。
如果您查看 bitcoin in the same light, daily headlines about interest rates rising or growing correlation with the Nasdaq or crashing technical indicators reveal themselves for what they are: non-events or value opportunities to increase your stake.
To have the confidence and grit to hold for the long term, you must understand what you own. Buffett’s letters to shareholders are his way to instill this, with a great deal of Berkshire-specific commentary but also general investment lessons from one of the most rational and clear-sighted investors in history. It would be nice if owning bitcoin also came with an owner’s manual, and Nakamoto delivered an annual missive urging you to stay the course. Instead, seeking out quality Bitcoin content from books, articles and podcasts that focus on fundamentals rather than price is essential to fortify yourself against inevitable turbulence.
Buffett and Munger have both said they knew with conviction they’d become very wealthy, but neither was in a hurry to do so. “Hurry” in this context means using leverage to supercharge returns and both investors regularly warn against it. Some have stated this is hypocritical because Berkshire does invest the float from its insurance businesses into stock and business purchases, therefore leveraging the business. To which one might say, if you look in the mirror and Warren Buffett or Bill Miller or Michael Saylor looks back at you, go ahead and use leverage in your bitcoin purchases; if not, then probably don’t.
正如巴菲特在他的 2010年致股东的信 并不是说杠杆从表面上看是不好的，而是即使它对你有利，它也在暗中破坏你：
“但杠杆会让人上瘾。 一旦从它的奇迹中获益，很少有人会退回到更保守的做法。 正如我们在三年级时学到的——有些人在 2008 年重新学习——任何一系列正数，无论这些数字多么令人印象深刻，乘以一个零就会消失。”
在伯克希尔的早期，巴菲特和芒格经常与一位名叫 Rick Guerin 的才华横溢的资本配置者一起投资。 他的失败在于他“着急”，并试图通过杠杆来推动他的投资回报，而这种杠杆在 1970 年代初期的繁华闹市中出现了问题。 追加保证金通知来了，为了筹集资金，他被迫以每股 40 美元左右的价格将他在伯克希尔持有的股份出售给巴菲特。
With Berkshire, bitcoin and investing in general, the smartest investors agree: The key to investing success is really just picking the right investment vehicle and then holding uninterruptedly to allow returns to compound for the longest possible period. Morgan Housel in “金钱心理学” points out — among many incisive essays that Bitcoiners would benefit from reading — that the vast majority of Buffett’s wealth was accumulated after he qualified for Social Security:
“沃伦巴菲特是一位了不起的投资者。 但是，如果您将他的所有成功都归功于投资敏锐度，您就会错过一个关键点。 他成功的真正关键在于，四分之三个世纪以来，他一直是一位非凡的投资者。 如果他在 30 多岁时开始投资并在 60 多岁时退休，那么很少有人会听说过他……实际上，沃伦·巴菲特的所有成功都与他在青春期建立的财务基础以及他在老年期保持的长寿息息相关。”
那么我们可以用更多的铁杆来对 HODL 做些什么呢？
专业化您的持有：如果您将其留在交易所，请采取措施进行自我保管或使用所有可能的安全措施。 知道你拥有什么并不断教育自己，这样耸人听闻的头条新闻就不会动摇你的长期心态。 不要专注于价格，考虑采用曲线或其他内在价值的代表，真正了解指数增长和复利的本质。 非常谨慎地借出或利用你的持股：你是否冒着可能无法替代的东西（你的核心持股）的风险来换取不太可能对你未来的自我产生太大影响的东西（增量回报）？
Do you have cash on the side to invest if the price crashes? According to Buffett, he was well into his investment career before he came to the clear realization that if you’re a consistent buyer of stocks (or bitcoin), long periods of falling prices are, in fact, exactly what you should be hoping for. A zooming share price is only good news if you plan to sell. This is rationally obvious but emotionally confounding, and almost impossible if you get sucked into the vortex of doom-laden headlines that accompany every downturn.
Berkshire A shares last traded at $20,000 in 1994. This year they broke through $500,000 per share for the first time. Invert Berkshire and its remarkable parallels to bitcoin show us the path to a similar valuation, and how to survive the journey.
这是一个客户后，由 克雷格·布多. 表达的意见完全是他们自己的，不一定反映 BTC Inc. 或 Bitcoin 杂志。
原始来源： Bitcoin 杂志