The cake painted by Gao Feng was very large and round, and he didn't know that after this cake was thrown out, it had a great shock to the imperial court. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Not to mention the matter of wool, the currency alone is enough to shock the imperial court.

Compared with the previous dynasties, the economy of the Song Dynasty developed rapidly, and the amount of coinage also increased greatly, and its total amount even exceeded that of the Tang Dynasty by 20 times. During this period, not only the Song coins were used in China, but also dozens of surrounding countries such as Liao, Xixia, and Dali also used Song coins.

Song coins became the international currency at that time, but such a large amount of coinage and demand, coupled with the price of copper is higher than copper coins, so that some wealthy merchants accumulate copper coins to turn copper, and so on, which caused the Song Dynasty to mint a lot of coins, but there has been a shortage of money.

The shortage of money is not a trivial problem, and the lack of money circulating in the market, resulting in deflation, is a major matter restricting the national economy and the people's livelihood. Under the premise that there is no large copper mining, this matter is difficult to solve, and it has become a major problem in the Great Song Dynasty.

In addition to the problem of money shortage, the cost of minting coinage has always been a headache for the imperial court. Minting requires a lot of labor, fire, and transportation, all of which must be included in the cost of minting. The ratio of Song money is seven copper, two lead and one iron, even so, the coinage is not profitable, and sometimes it will lose money. The imperial court spends a lot of energy to mint money, not only for domestic use, but also for foreign countries, but it can't make money, and even has a shortage of money, which makes the court dissatisfied.

The imperial court sought countermeasures in many ways to solve the problems of large transactions, money shortages, and coinage costs, but most of them ended in vain.

Gao Feng's proposal is exactly what the imperial court likes, opening a new path for it to ease the situation of currency tensions.

Of course, he can't completely solve it, let alone say that he can't solve it, that is, after the issuance of paper money, there are still a lot of problems, but the situation is slightly better.

The core of the summit proposal is to implement a graded currency, so that multiple currencies coexist, and at the same time add a new coinage process, so that the new coins are beautiful and durable, and have anti-counterfeiting functions, but also save the cost of coinage, and make the coinage profitable.

In fact, the phenomenon of hierarchical currency and multi-currency coexistence already existed in the Great Song Dynasty, for example, in addition to copper coins, gold and silver were also regarded as legal tender, and there were also official issuances. In addition, there is the iron coin, which is the next level of copper coin, which is a currency issued when copper is scarce, generally ten iron for one copper.

In addition, there are several forms of monetary functions, such as salt banknotes, tea quotations, jiaozi, silver bills and money quotations, which can be described as numerous and mixed.

Gold, silver, copper, and iron are metal currencies that have been the most protracted. It's just that they also face some problems.

In addition to its large issuance, copper coins were able to be used as mainstream currency, mainly because they were mixed with lead and iron, which made the cost of the imperial court relatively low.

Iron coins are prone to rust and cannot be stored for long periods of time, and they are also indiscriminately issued, so they are only popular in some regions.

There are two main reasons why gold and silver cannot be used as mainstream currency, one is that the imperial court does not have many reserves, and it is easy to be used by some wealthy families to make jewelry objects, so the circulation is limited. There is another more important point, that is, the current process can not be blended, if it is to be issued, it is pure gold and silver currency, and it is bound to lose so much that you can't even wear pants, and the imperial court will naturally not do this kind of credit trading.

Salt banknotes, tea notes, jiaozi, silver bills and money notes are all paper money, equivalent to later banknotes, which are the form of currency set up for special transactions or bulk transactions, but they are all gone because of the official unlimited issuance or the termination of the official monopoly without reputation. At present, there is only one item of money citation.

In any case, Gao Feng's proposal has been considered for a long time, but there is no way to achieve it, so it has not been implemented.

Gao Feng dares to implement, naturally has his advantages, that is, technical advantages, this technical advantage is mainly reflected in two aspects.

First, the minting process is more advanced than the original. Nowadays, copper coins are basically cast with molds, and the workload is very large, and a group of workers can't cast many copper coins in a day. And this process is very easy to imitate, which creates the phenomenon of counterfeit money is rampant.

Gao Feng offered a different method, he first poured the metal block uniformly, then pressed the metal bar, and then cut and embossed the coin, which was mainly machine-based, which was significantly faster and less labor-saving than nowadays.

Second, the process formula should be advanced.

The reason why all kinds of coins are difficult to mix, in addition to the temperature is difficult to meet the requirements, the most important thing is that it is easy to oxidize at high temperature after mixing other metals, such as copper is easy to be oxidized by oxygen, silver is easy to be oxidized by sulfur, so the coins that come out lose their due luster, or discoloration, or dull, in short, it is difficult to achieve satisfaction.

Gao Feng naturally knows the reason, so when melting the alloy, he not only tries to shield the relevant oxides from entering, but also adds some reducing agents such as toner, so as to ensure that the alloy material is not affected by oxides at high temperatures.

With these means, coupled with the control of temperature and heat, even gold and silver can also be blended.

The material formula provided by Gao Feng is that the copper coins are seven copper and three zinc, the silver coins are seven silver and three copper, and the gold coins are seven gold and three silver. In this way, all three have huge profit margins, and the imperial court is naturally interested.

Of course, the main thing in the peak is the silver coin, which is equivalent to the silver dollar of later generations, which is not only beautiful in appearance, but also can distinguish the authenticity through argumentation, and cannot be counterfeited at all.

The reason why he focuses on this is because he has a large amount of trade here, and it is really time-consuming and laborious to use copper coins, and the manpower consumed in this piece alone is innumerable. And because it is a trial trial, it is better to postpone the implementation of gold coins, after all, the exchange relationship is larger, and the court is not worried about him.

The court was shocked by this matter, naturally because he was able to realize the blending of silver coins, and the samples made of his silver coins were very refined and had great promotion value. Therefore, when the sample appeared in the court, everyone was shocked.

The conclusion is self-evident and feasible.

In addition to being shocked, everyone is also discussing, after all, this matter is related to the Great Song Dynasty, if it is only issued by a small county town, it is a bit nondescript, and it can be used as a trial site to deprive others of the right to distribute, which is also unreasonable.

Discussion and discussion, finally determined, trial period, issued by the county, during the period, the county government should hand over the relevant technology to the imperial court, by the imperial court for distribution.

Although this move was shameless, it was also expected by Gao Feng, and he didn't think about hiding it, otherwise he wouldn't have reported the matter to the imperial court. However, he also made up his mind that it was okay to hand in the technology, and he would not go to the ridiculous collection of copyrights, but he had a coin-making machine, which cost money, and the court had to spend money to buy it, so that he could make a good profit.