You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

FROM CROESUS TO CRYPTO
 
�            Paper mon­ey was invent­ed in China’s Song Dynasty in the 11th
cen­tu­ry CE. Despite its wide­spread use at the time, no sam­ples of
Song paper mon­ey exist today.
 
�       Although the US Fed­er­al Reserve was start­ed by the gov­ern­ment and
is the country’s tax-exempt cen­tral bank, its 12 bank branch­es have
been cit­ed as “inde­pen­dent, pri­vate­ly owned and local­ly con­trolled
cor­po­ra­tions” by the courts.
 
�       The deben was the unit ancient Egyp­tians used for mea­sur­ing weight.
Although not a true cur­ren­cy, the deben was a stan­dard­ized mea­sure
of pre­cious met­als.
 
�            The inventor/developer of Bit­coin is believed to be a Japan­ese man
named Satoshi Nakamo­to. Many believe Nakamo­to is actu­al­ly a
group of devel­op­ers. So why has the anony­mous Satoshi Nakamo­to
nev­er come for­ward? Gyor­fi believes the Bit­coin founder has
remained in the shad­ows so that the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy is nev­er
con­nect­ed to one per­son, to uphold it as a decen­tral­ized sys­tem in
which no sin­gle per­son or group has con­trol.
 
�       The US dol­lar is the reserve cur­ren­cy of most nations and the offi­cial
cur­ren­cy of sev­er­al inde­pen­dent, non-US coun­tries. Pana­ma, Ecuador,
El Sal­vador, the Mar­shall Islands, the Repub­lic of Palau, and the
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Tim­or-Leste all use Uncle Sam’s dol­lars.
 
�       On June 28, 2021, El Sal­vador became the first nation in the world to
make Bit­coin legal ten­der. Bit­coin is now accept­ed at Sal­vado­ran
retail stores and for tax­es.
 
�            As of March 2022, Elon Musk was the rich­est per­son in the world,
worth more than $268 bil­lion. Not bad for a nerd from South Africa!
 
�            More than 20 coun­tries use a dol­lar as their cur­ren­cy, includ­ing
Cana­da, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, and the US. A thaler is one of the
large sil­ver coins mint­ed in the states and ter­ri­to­ries of the Holy
Roman Empire and the Hab­s­burg monar­chy dur­ing the Ear­ly Mod­ern
peri­od. A thaler size sil­ver coin has a diam­e­ter of about 40 mm and a
weight of about 25 to 30 grams. It’s believed that the use of the word
began in Ger­many in the 1500s with coins known as the thaler.
 
�            You may find it hard to believe, but infla­tion was a prob­lem in the
Roman Empire. The debase­ment of the sil­ver denar­ius coin, the
Anto­nine plague (CE 165–175), and oth­er fac­tors led to an incred­i­ble
infla­tion rate of 15,000% between CE 200 and 300.
 
�            When the “debt ceil­ing” was first cre­at­ed by the US Con­gress in
1917, it was $11.5 bil­lion. It’s now near­ly $31 tril­lion!
 
�       King Croe­sus of Lydia (ruled ca. 560–540s BCE) is believed to have
been the rich­est man in the world in his time. Croe­sus acquired his
wealth by min­ing the sil­ver-gold alloy known as elec­trum near the
city of Sardis.
 
�            In Novem­ber 2008, Zimbabwe’s econ­o­my hit 6.5 sex­til­lion per­cent
infla­tion. The worst of the infla­tion occurred in Novem­ber 2008 with
a rate esti­mat­ed at 79,600,000,000% per month, with the year-over-
year infla­tion rate reach­ing an astound­ing 89.7 sex­til­lion per­cent,
lead­ing to the aban­don­ment of the cur­ren­cy.
 
�       In eco­nom­ics and finance, fiat is a term used to describe mon­ey that
isn’t backed by gold, sil­ver, or oth­er com­modi­ties. Fiat is a Latin term
that means “let it be done.”
 
�            Coin cur­ren­cy began in Lydia in the late 7th cen­tu­ry BCE. The
ear­li­est coins were made of the gold-sil­ver alloy, elec­trum.
 
�            The new shekel replaced Israel’s pre­vi­ous cur­ren­cy, the Israeli
shekel, in 1986. The term “shekel” is quite ancient, though, being
used in the Near East in the 2nd mil­len­ni­um BCE as a mea­sure of
weight.
 
�       A troy ounce — which is used to weigh gold, sil­ver, and oth­er pre­cious
met­als — mea­sures 31.1 grams. A stan­dard ounce weighs 28.3 grams.
 
�            A cryp­tocur­ren­cy is any decen­tral­ized, dig­i­tal money/currency that
uses cryp­tog­ra­phy to pro­tect trans­ac­tions and pre­vent fraud. Bit­coin
became the world’s first cryp­tocur­ren­cy in 2009, and now
cryp­tocur­ren­cies, as they’re called, are a dime — or should I say, a
Bit­coin — a dozen.
 
�            Accord­ing to the Fed­er­al Deposit Insur­ance Cor­po­ra­tion FDIC, one
in 12 Amer­i­cans is “unbanked,” or they have no bank account. Note
that home to 225 mil­lion adults with­out an account, Chi­na has the
world’s largest non-bank­ing pop­u­la­tion, fol­lowed by India (190
mil­lion), Pak­istan (100 mil­lion), and Indone­sia (95 mil­lion)
 
�            Finan­cial ana­lyst and TV per­son­al­i­ty, Jim Cramer, pro­claimed in
Feb­ru­ary 2000 that there were ten stocks every­one should own. By
2009 all of those were either out of busi­ness or a frac­tion of their
2000 val­ue.
 
�            The British pound, or pound ster­ling, is the world’s old­est cur­ren­cy
still in use. It was adopt­ed more than 1,200 years ago and remains
strong, as the fourth-most trad­ed cur­ren­cy.
 
�       If you ever come across some gold or sil­ver in your grandma’s attic,
you may have to have it met­al­lur­gi­cal­ly assayed. An assay is a
chem­i­cal analy­sis of pre­cious met­al to deter­mine its qual­i­ty.
 
�       Midas was the ruler of the Ana­to­lian King­dom of Phry­gia from about
738 to 696 BCE. Although he was wealthy, the idea that every­thing
he touched turned to gold was added much lat­er by the Roman poet
Ovid (43 BCE-CE 17/18).