By Bitcoin 雜誌 - 1 年前 - 閱讀時間：12 分鐘
Bitcoin 和伯克希爾哈撒韋公司有著相似的理念
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 雜誌。
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:
“顛倒，總是顛倒：把一個情況或問題顛倒過來。 向後看。 如果我們所有的計劃都出錯了怎麼辦？ 我們不想去哪裡，你怎麼去那裡？ 與其尋找成功，不如列出如何失敗的清單……告訴我我將死在哪裡，也就是說，這樣我就不會去那裡。” — 查理芒格
保持那個想法。
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.
權力下放
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.
但獨特的是，一旦一家公司達到了收購標準，他們基本上就會被告知照原樣繼續經營（伯克希爾哈撒韋公司不投資於扭虧為盈的故事，因此其收購的公司已經是成功的企業）。 他們保留自主權，可以使用現有的人員和系統以他們認為合適的方式開展業務。 伯克希爾為公司扮演的角色是 描述 作為“你能想像到的最友好的銀行家——沒有乾涉、合同、條件、契約、到期日或其他中介限制。” 這就是伯克希爾如何能夠管理世界上最大的公司之一，其總部員工人數只有 30 人左右，沒有人力資源部門，甚至沒有組織結構圖。
再加上龐大的現金儲備及其公共股票投資（也多種多樣，但主要集中在金融服務領域），經濟可能不會出現轉機、技術中斷、醜聞或可能永久破壞伯克希爾哈撒韋的自然災害，包括它的創始人。 它可以再使用一百年。
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“信任邊際：伯克希爾的商業模式”，長期擔任伯克希爾歷史學家的勞倫斯·A·坎寧安 (Lawrence A. Cunningham) 探討了巴菲特與信任概念的關係，他將信任稱為伯克希爾的“統一原則”。 世界上沒有一家規模接近伯克希爾的公司以同樣的至高無上的態度對待信任，也沒有哪位首席執行官可能更受信任。
最明顯的是，信任體現在伯克希爾收購企業的直接方式上：沒有投資銀行家或金融中介機構（難以信任），沒有敵意收購，沒有重組。 一旦他們完成了盡職調查並建立了信任和誠信，這就是所有權的直接轉讓。 同樣，企業的賣家（其中許多仍然由創始人經營）選擇伯克希爾，因為他們相信伯克希爾是他們所建立的公司和在那里工作的個人的負責任的管家。
巴菲特的年度股東信往往是對他自己的失敗和失誤的樸實無華和坦率的評估。 這是一種非常強大但非常罕見的企業溝通方式，也是他在伯克希爾哈撒韋公司及其股東之間建立信任的主要方式之一。 他將股東視為企業中真正的合作夥伴，將他自己和伯克希爾董事會視為他們利益的可信賴管家。 這被編入 伯克希爾的所有者手冊，一份 1996 年的文件，闡述了企業的經營理念。 它指出：
“我們不將公司本身視為我們業務資產的最終所有者，而是將公司視為我們的股東擁有資產的渠道。”
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.
激勵
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.
激勵措施在伯克希爾也起到了雙重作用。 業務經理、公司官員和投資顧問與伯克希爾股東保持一致，因為與直覺相反，他們獲得的是工資和績效獎金，而不是股票期權。
巴菲特對以股票為基礎的薪酬獎勵上市公司高層管理人員的做法表示不滿，因為它經常與實際業績脫鉤，往往會鼓勵短期主義，並會稀釋現有股東的利益。 然而，伯克希爾收購公司的高管和創始人通常被允許保留其原始業務的所有權百分比，以激勵“所有者”心態。
伯克希爾哈撒韋公司從未拆分其最初的 A 股——迄今為止標準普爾 500 指數中最昂貴的股票——的原因也是基於激勵，或者更確切地說是基於抑制。 在 1995 年的演講中， 巴菲特解釋 他的推理：
“我們希望吸引盡可能以投資為導向、具有長遠眼光的股東……[使用更便宜的、拆分調整後的股票]……我們幾乎可以肯定，我們會得到一個不會有的股東基礎我們現在的複雜程度和目標與我們的同步。 我們對伯克希爾股票真正不需要的是更多的需求……我們不在乎讓它賣得更高，除非內在價值增長。”
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.
文化活動
想像 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.
伯克希爾哈撒韋公司也有自己的忠實擁護者大軍，最引人注目的是公司每年在內布拉斯加州奧馬哈總部舉行的年度股東大會。 除了活動的樂趣和傳統之外，巴菲特意識到圍繞伯克希爾成長起來的文化以及作為領導者對他的信任是一個強大的優勢，可以按照他認為最理性的方式塑造公司，而不是達成共識。 他能夠召集大多數股東抵制支付股息的提議，拆分他的角色，改變薪酬結構，剝離能源股票並提前退休。
由於其文化，伯克希爾擁有異常穩定的股權，特別是與機構投資者和養老金計劃相比，其長期個人持有者數量較多。 連同精心設計的公司結構，它使公司的大部分運營都無需擔心激進主義或剝離或改變路線的壓力。
經驗教訓
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 “關於加密的真相” 他指出，用於評估股票、債券和房地產等傳統資產的模型不應應用於數字資產：
“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.
它在一個單一的實體中令人放心地證明了權力下放的原則以及創新的信任和激勵方法是世界領先的屬性。 它表明，文化、教育和明顯的主人翁意識是應對混亂市場的關鍵。
這是最近 計算 伯克希爾可能會損失 99% 的價值，但它的表現仍然優於標準普爾 500 指數，可追溯到 1965 年。要獲得這些收益，儘管你必須挺過九次衰退。 巴菲特說要重新定義你的股票所有權，將它們視為實際企業所有權的百分比，而不是屏幕上跳來跳去的數字。
想像一下，您擁有一家成功的本地企業的被動股份，該企業多年來不斷發展壯大：與大多數人買賣股票的方式相比，隨著家庭財富的增長，持有它幾十年要容易得多？ 在經濟低迷時期，您有機會通過繼續購買其打折股票來增加您的持股比例，因為您知道經濟衰退是商業周期的正常組成部分。
If you view 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.
這個問題，正如巴菲特在他的 2010年致股東的信 並不是說槓桿表面上不好，而是即使它對您有利，它也在暗中破壞您：
“但槓桿會讓人上癮。 一旦從它的奇蹟中獲利，很少有人退回到更保守的做法。 正如我們在三年級時學到的——有些人在 2008 年重新學到了——任何一系列正數，無論這些數字多麼令人印象深刻，在乘以一個零時都會消失。”
在伯克希爾的早期，巴菲特和芒格經常與一位名叫里克·格林的才華橫溢的資本配置者一起投資。 他的垮台在於他“匆忙”並試圖通過槓桿來推動他的投資回報，而這種槓桿在 1970 世紀 40 年代初期的劇烈市場中出現了偏差。 追加保證金通知來了，為了籌集資金，他被迫以每股 XNUMX 美元左右的價格將他持有的伯克希爾哈撒韋股份出售給巴菲特。
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 “金錢心理學” 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:
“沃倫巴菲特是一位了不起的投資者。 但如果你把他的所有成功都歸功於投資敏銳度，你就錯過了一個關鍵點。 他成功的真正關鍵在於，在四分之三個世紀的時間裡，他一直是一位非凡的投資者。 如果他在 30 多歲開始投資並在 60 多歲退休，很少有人會聽說過他……實際上，沃倫巴菲特的所有成功都可以與他在青春期建立的財務基礎和他在老年時期保持的長壽聯繫在一起”
那麼，只要多一點鐵，我們能對 HODL 做些什麼呢？
專業化您的持股：如果您將其留在交易所，請採取措施進行自我監管或使用一切可能的安全措施。 知道你擁有什麼並不斷地教育自己，這樣聳人聽聞的頭條新聞就不會讓你擺脫長期的心態。 不要專注於價格，考慮採用曲線或其他內在價值的代表，真正理解指數增長和復利的本質。 小心翼翼地借出或利用您的持股：您是否正在冒著不可替代的風險（您的核心持股）去購買不太可能對您未來的自我產生太大影響的東西（增量回報）？
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.
這是一篇客座文章 克雷格布多。 所表達的意見完全是他們自己的，並不一定反映 BTC Inc. 或 Bitcoin 雜誌。
原始來源： Bitcoin 雜誌