问答题 When the Venetian merchant Marco Polo got to China, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, he saw many wonders, such as gunpowder, coal, eyeglasses and porcelain. One of the things that astonished him most, (1)_____, was a new invention, implemented by Kublai Khan, a grandson of the great conqueror Genghis. It was paper money, (2)_____ by Kublai in 1260.
The problem with many new forms of money is that people are (3)______ to adopt them. Genghis Khan's grandson didn't have that difficulty. He took (4)______ to ensure the authenticity of his currency, and if you didn't use it, he would have you killed. This solved the question of uptake.
Marco Polo was right to be amazed. The instruments of trade and finance are (5), in the same way that creations of art and discoveries of science are inventions. They are all (6) of the human imagination. Paper money, (7)______ by the authority of the state, was an astonishing innovation, one that reshaped the world. That's hard to remember: we grow used to the ways we pay our bills and are paid for our work, to the dance of numbers in our bank (8)______ and credit-card statements. It's only at moments when the system buckles that we start to wonder why these things are worth what they seem to be worth.
The credit crunch in 2008 (9)______ a panic when people throughout the financial system wondered whether the numbers on balance sheets meant what they were (10)______ to mean. As a direct response to the crisis, in October, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the white paper that outlined the idea of Bitcoin, a new form of money based on nothing but the power of cryptography.
Choose from the words A - L the one which best fits each gap of 1 - 10, and select the letter from the drop - down list accordingly. There are two extra words which you do not need to use.
A) additionally
B) reluctant
C) however
D) willing
E) introduced
F) inventions
G) supposed
H) products
I) measures
J) balances
K) triggered
L) backed