Daming: The system rejected my request for salted fish

After listening to Wei Wu's explanation, Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly realized that he was wrong.

Just like Wei Wu said, there is no need to use color-changing ink on the entire silver note. It is enough to prevent counterfeiting.

As for Wei Wu, the reason why he said that it could not be used up was also because the consumption was really not large.

The size of the Ming Treasure Note is about the same as an A4 paper, of course, I am referring to the large denomination of one Guan of money.

A font the size of half a finger on an A4 paper probably doesn't even cover one percent of the area.

Let's calculate it at one percent. The normal consumption of printing ink is 1 gram per square meter, and assume that the loss rate of the printing process is ten percent.

So, one liter of ink can print about 1,442,700 A4 sheets.

The paint bucket that Wei Wu had just taken out of Fengxian Hall had a capacity of twenty liters.

It is calculated that this bucket of color-changing ink can print 28,854,000 A4 papers.

The maximum denomination of a silver note has not yet been determined, but Wei Wu's idea is that the maximum is one thousand taels and the minimum is ten taels.

Originally the smallest note was one tael, but the treasure notes already had a denomination of one guan, and silver notes were for merchants to use.

If calculated at one thousand taels, the total amount of silver notes that can be printed by a barrel of color-changing ink is as high as 28.8 billion.

Even if we calculate based on the smallest denomination of ten taels, a barrel of color-changing ink can print out silver notes with a total value of 288 million.

What a concept!

During the Hongwu period, the Ming Dynasty's annual tax revenue was only 20 million silver coins, not even a fraction of 28.8 billion.

Just one bucket of color-changing ink is enough to print the total tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty for a thousand years, or even more.

Even if only the denomination of ten taels was printed, it would take the Ming Dynasty ten years of accumulated tax revenue to reach this number.

Even if the quality of paper during the Ming Dynasty was not good enough, the lifespan of a piece of paper could at least be more than three years.

If it is printed in batches, a hundred years is not an exaggeration at all, not to mention that Wei Wu has more than one barrel in stock.

That standard 40-foot container was filled with 1,500 barrels of 20-liter color-changing ink.

Wei Wu even took the shelf life into consideration, and only needed to take out a bucket of color-changing ink for each printing.

Just put the rest in the system warehouse and you don’t have to worry about them expiring over time.

However, Wei Wu was worried that Zhu Yuanzhang was still not reassured, so he repeated the data to Zhu Yuanzhang.

After listening to Wei Wu's explanation, Zhu Yuanzhang no longer had any concerns about the anti-counterfeiting of silver notes.

"It's just that I haven't considered it carefully enough. As you said, then we don't have to worry about our banknotes being counterfeited."

"If that's the case, after we defeat the Japanese pirates, we can start opening a bank!"

Wei Wu nodded in agreement and said, "That's right!"

But then he added another sentence.

"However, in the early stages, it would be best if the opening of a money shop was exclusively run by the imperial court, and the issuance of silver bills could only be managed by the imperial court."

"This way, if any problems are discovered during the operation of the bank, they can be adjusted and corrected immediately to avoid any mistakes."

"Once the money exchange system is stable and accepted by the people, we can allow private merchants to operate money exchanges."

When Zhu Yuanzhang heard that private merchants would be allowed to open money shops, he frowned.

In his opinion, money houses are related to national economic issues. How can the public be allowed to participate in such an important matter?

So after listening to Wei Wu's words, he immediately asked:

"Xiao Wu, businessmen are only interested in profit. Isn't it a bad idea to allow private businessmen to participate in such an important organization?"

Wei Wu also guessed what Zhu Yuanzhang was thinking, so he explained:

"Mr. Zhu, private merchants who run money shops don't have the ability to issue silver bills. They only have deposit and withdrawal services."