Compared to the high profile of tax reform.

The currency reform introduced by Emperor Zhu Youzhen of the Ming Dynasty was much more low-key.

Because the president of the newly established Daming Central Bank is the chief eunuch of the Ming Dynasty, the eunuch Han Shoujing, and the vice presidents Wang Jiaqin and Yang Mingshen are all minor officials of the six grades.

Therefore, the civil officials of the outer court were not interested in this new thing that suddenly appeared, and in their eyes it was just a new institution in the inner court.

As long as the Ming Emperor does not affect the political system of the civil officials of the foreign dynasties, these civil officials do not mind how His Majesty the Emperor's own inner court plays.

What's more, now that they are all focused on tax reform, where is the energy to pay attention to the affairs of the inner court.

Only Liu Zongzhou, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, made a note and advised Zhu Youzhen not to pamper Li Zi and his ilk.

Li Zi Province is a fortunate minister who was not born in the Zhengtu of Jinshi during the Chenghua period, and Liu Zongzhou prefaced Li Zi Province in Zhu Youzhen's presence, naturally because Zhu Youzhen suddenly appointed Wang Jiaqin and Yang Mingshen as the head of the household department.

However, this kind of official title, which is just a sixth grade, is not a real position, and only Liu Zongzhou, a fastidious obsessive-compulsive person with official position, complains, and the other ministers do not mention it.

Zhu Youzhen didn't bother to pay attention to Liu Zongzhou, after all, the affairs of his inner court, the civil officials of the foreign dynasty could not interfere except for the blind **.

If he intervened, he could have executed them for trespassing.

As a result, monetary reform proceeded smoothly, even more smoothly than tax reform.

Zhu Youzhen ordered Qi Biaojia, the right attendant of the household department, to hand over all the officials and craftsmen of the Baoquan Bureau, who was previously in charge of coinage, to Wang Jiaqin, who was responsible for coinage and management of reserves.

Due to the abuse of Daming treasure banknotes, paper money has almost no credibility in the current Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, after Zhu Youzhen threw out two sets of plans for Yuan Datou's silver dollar and paper money, Wang Jiaqin and others still suggested that Zhu Youzhen be the new currency.

Zhu Youzhen also agreed to this suggestion and put Wang Jiaqin in charge of minting silver dollars.

In the end, Zhu Youzhen determined a silver dollar similar to Yuan Datou as the Ming currency, with the image of the emperor wearing a winged crown on his head as the obverse, the Chinese character value as the back, and the unit was set as "yuan".

Wang Jiaqin is a giant businessman in Ningbo, and it is already a common thing to investigate the commodity trading volume in various parts of the Ming Dynasty and make a budget for the scale of production in the coming year, but now it is easy to investigate the market currency volume and determine the amount of currency to be issued to the entire Ming commodity economic market according to the information provided by Zhu Youzhen, and even the personnel are ready-made.

However, after Zhu Youzhen handed over the key to the treasury containing 20 million gold and silver to Wang Jiaqin, he still instructed: "From now on, all the wealth of the entire court is in the hands of your Wang Jiaqin. ”

"Your Majesty, please rest assured, Weichen dares to guarantee that the money in this treasury will only be more, not less, if this time next year, there is one less point, my Wang family will subsidize ten points to the court!"

Wang Jiaqin was indeed very frivolous, and directly promised a big word in front of Zhu Youzhen.

However, although Wang Jiaqin said a lot, he did have some strength, and he minted the first batch of silver dollars ready to be put on the market within a month.

Yang Mingshen's side has already opened his own silver account in various prefectures and counties, and all of them have been renamed as branches and sub-branches of a certain prefecture and county of the Daming Central Bank.

The headquarters of the Daming Central Bank was Zhu Youzhen, who directly allocated Qian Qianyi's mansion near Xuanjin Bridge Street to Yang Mingshen, and asked him to build it as the bank's headquarters.

Because Yang Mingshen's family itself is a big Jin merchant who releases tickets, and almost all prefectures and counties have silver numbers, so the bank was built very quickly.

However, there were no people who were familiar with banking business, so Yang Mingshen had to summon the shopkeepers from all over the country together for a short-term training of half a month according to Zhu Youzhen's request, and then the shopkeepers went back to train the people under them.

It took a month to build the Ming Central Bank, from the external building to the internal staff.

In mid-August, Yang Mingshen and Wang Jiaqin met with Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen again, and Wang Jiaqin stood up first: "Your Majesty, the first batch of the first set of silver dollars has arrived at the Central Bank of the Ming Dynasty, with a total value of 15 million silver dollars, and 10 million taels of silver, once this is used instead of silver, the treasury can make a profit of 5 million taels!" ”

"Return, Your Majesty, Weichen's side has also been fully distributed, just wait for Your Majesty's order, you can start exchanging it in Yingtian, Suzhou, Songjiang, Hangzhou and other places!" Yang Mingshen also replied.

Zhu Youzhen nodded, and then ordered the cabinet to instruct the world, from now on, the Ming Dynasty will use the silver coins engraved with the image of our emperor as the currency, and order the central bank of the Ming Dynasty to recover the gold, silver and copper coins that pass in the city, and at the same time announce the exchange rules. In addition, the content of the decree also includes that from the beginning of the first month of next year, only silver dollars will be recognized for tax collection and military salaries.

At this time, the bureaucrats, gentry and common people in the entire Jiangnan realized that His Majesty had unknowingly changed the money law.

However, no one knows what the silver dollar is, and although eagles have appeared on the market in this era, people habitually prefer to believe in gold and silver.

And now the tax has not yet begun to be collected, so although banks have opened everywhere, there are very few exchangers, let alone large merchants.

Zhu Youzhen's ambitious financial reform seems to be in trouble, and the new money created by spending a month of manpower, material and financial resources has been piled up directly in the treasury of the Daming Central Bank and local branches, and it is almost dusty.

Silver, gold and even copper coins are still circulating in the market, and even caused panic, and some merchants are afraid that the silver will really be lost, and they begin to refuse to accept copper coins as a way of trading, which has a great impact on the lives of ordinary people who have more money and less silver.

Lu Zhenfei, who was a scholar of Dongge University and the governor of Nanzhili, had to report the situation to Zhu Youzhen, and also began to euphemistically ask Zhu Youzhen if the pace of reform of the money law was too big.

Zhu Youzhen was very depressed about this, and the lack of paper money was too large, if he still only changed the copper coin ratio, it would be no different from not changing.

However, the lack of trust in the new currency by all strata of the Ming Dynasty is only one problem, and the other aspect is that a group of military officials such as Ma Shiying, the secretary of the Ministry of War, and the civil and military officials who led the troops said that the use of silver coins instead of silver taels for military salaries is likely to cause instability in the morale of the army, and so on, and also questioned Zhu Youzhen's implementation of the new currency.

The person in charge of the Jin merchant Fan family, who competed with Yang Mingshen, also began to laugh at Yang Mingshen for betting on the wrong treasure, and actually played blindly with Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, and also lost all his family business, and even changed the name of the silver number left by his ancestors.

However, just when all sides were questioning and ridiculing this low-key and high-profile monetary reform, several major tea, porcelain and silk giants in Ningbo suddenly appeared at the central banks of various prefectures and counties to demand exchange.

At the same time, as the planner who called on several major merchant families in Ningbo to take the lead in exchanging, Wang Jiaqin also directly asked the Zheng family to buy tea, silk and porcelain from their maritime merchants, and they must switch to silver dollar trading.

In this way, a new channel was opened for the introduction of a new currency.

The silver dollars that had been hoarded in various places by the Daming Central Bank also began to slowly flow into the market.