On the banks of the Huaishui River, Yuwen Wen was looking at a knife coin in his hand. This knife coin was found in a warehouse in a certain fortress. It has a special style, is famous and has a famous name, and is called "Jincuo Dao".

Also known as "one knife is a level of five thousand", this does not mean that this sword coin is an ancient artifact. It can destroy 5,000 people by holding it in your hand (swing a knife). Instead, as a sword coin made by the Xinmang currency reform, a sword coin is worth five thousand five-zhu coins.

Xinmang, the Xin Dynasty built by Wang Mang, a relative of the foreign country at the end of the Western Han Dynasty. The "Jin Crushed Knife" issued by the Xin Dynasty is a representative of this short-lived dynasty.

The knife coin "Jincuo Knife" is divided into two parts: the ring handle and the blade body. The ring handle is a square hole and round coins. The ring text is called "Yi" and the lower part is called "Knife". The character is Yin carved, and the character is filled with gold in the trap. This is the gold process and polished to make the literal surface flush with the money surface.

The sword is cast with the three words "ping Wuqian" in the positive text, where "ping" means "value", which means that the value of a sword coin is equal to five thousand Wuzhu coins.

In Yuwen Wen's opinion, the appearance of this knife coin is like a microphone in later generations. It is somewhat inappropriate to use it as currency. However, after the demise of Wang Mang's new dynasty, Jincuodao changed his identity and changed from currency to collectibles.

Of course, the value of the collectibles cannot be evaluated based on actual value. According to the current market conditions, a gold-wrong knife can be sold for nearly a consistent amount of money from the "collectors", and has initially achieved the effect of "one knife is enough for five thousand" in another form.

Wang Mang issued the knife coin "Golden Cut Knife", using the gold craft that was very popular in the Han Dynasty, inlaying gold (wrong) on ​​bronze coins, so the "Golden Cut Knife" is actually a kind of inlay coin (double-color coin).

The large-scale circulation of inlay coins only appeared in "modern". It can be said that "Jinzhaodao" is the ancestor or prototype of inlay coins. However, with the demise of Wang Mang's new dynasty, there were no circulating inlay coins before the Central Plains to "modern".

The reason is probably the cost issue, and coins minted in all dynasties cannot be avoided.

Yuwen Wen learned that the cost of minting a hundred copper coins with a face value of one cent is not less than one hundred and ten cents. Then the more coins the court minted, the more losses it will be.

In order to ensure the credit of copper coins and the face of the court, the coins in the money prison were all very good copper coins, but one hundred coins could be circulated on the market and were used to melt into copper materials and then sold, with the income not less than one hundred coins.

Not to mention that good money with sufficient quality will be stored in a unit of thousands of pounds. There are fewer and fewer good money on the market, and more and more bad money. This is the so-called bad money driving out good money.

This leads to a vicious cycle, that is, no matter how many copper coins the imperial court minted, it could not meet the circulation needs. The more they were minted, the more losses they would lose. In the future, they could only use iron coins or low copper coins to charge the amount, resulting in damage to the credit of the currency.

The weight of the money minted by the imperial court has become worse and worse, which has led to people hiding more good coins for spare use, and the phenomenon of bad coins driving out good coins has become more serious.

This problem is unsolvable because since ancient times, the Central Plains lacks copper. The so-called "deficiency" does not mean that the copper output in the Central Plains is low, but that the demand for copper is much greater than the annual copper output. In fact, it is the serious supply and demand contradiction that leads to the "deficiency of copper".

There was a high demand for copper. In order to cast copper coins, the court strictly controlled the mining and sales of copper, which led to copper coins becoming the best source for the people to obtain copper, resulting in a more profitable phenomenon of melting 100-cent good money into copper materials.

This supply and demand contradiction has always existed. Unless large-scale copper ore can be mined on a large scale, the copper output will surge, it will not be fundamentally solved.

In order to solve the currency problem, Yuwen Wen racked his brains to finally find a reference from the Golden Scratch Knife: making two-color coins (intact coins).

Yuwen Wen held a golden knife in one hand and took out a two-color coin with the other. This coin was brought by Zhang Dingfa, a Sima of the royal palace, from Xiyang, and was made for the workshop. It was well-made.

The outer ring of this currency is white, the inner core is yellow, and the style is novel. It is made of white copper and brass. Yu Wenwen can pat his chest and say that once this two-color currency (intact currency) is circulated, it will be unique in the world.

Two-color coins, also known as bimetal coins, inlay coins and sandwich coins, were originally a new style of "modern" coins. They were coins inlaid with two different metals as anti-counterfeiting means.

The two-color coins in Yuwen Wen's hand are made of brass with a color of gold and white copper with a color of silver. They are gold and silver. They look like coins inlaid with gold and silver, high-end, atmospheric and high-end.

Maybe someone can imitate this two-color currency, but the cost must be very high, so the cost has become the biggest reliance on the anti-counterfeiting of the two-color currency.

Forging two-color coins not only have similar appearances, but also durable. You cannot separate the ring and core of the two-color coins by pressing them with your hands. It may be possible to make a fake coin do this, but to make thousands of fake coins reach this level, the cost will inevitably rise sharply.

Even if you make a useful counterfeit currency, the cost will be several times or even more than ten times higher than its face value. In this way, who can still make counterfeit currency on a large scale?

As long as the court fully implements the two-color coins and allows the Wuzhu coins minted by all dynasties to be out of circulation, then in the circulation field, if bad coins are driven out of good coins, there must be useful counterfeit and inferior two-color coins.

If someone wants to store two-color coins, then Yuwen Wen has the magic weapon of "sinning tax" in his hand and is not afraid of losing money by minting coins.

However, if you want to issue two-color coins on a large scale, you also need to solve the cost problem: even if the "patenter" makes two-color coins, the production cost is extremely high. If the cost cannot be greatly reduced, the two-color coins cannot be circulated on a large scale.

According to Lin Youdi's report, the production cost of a two-color coin is no less than 500 ci, while Yuwen Wen expects that the face value of a two-color coin should not be greater than 100 ci. The huge cost gap hinders the practicality of the two-color coin.

Wang Mang promoted the gold-wrong knife to plunder the wealth of the people. The gold that was wrong on the knife coins was not worth five thousand coins at all. Yuwen Wen wanted to promote the two-color coins not to make money, but to allow the two-color coins to be circulated on a large scale among the people and assume the function of currency.

If the face value of a two-color coin is 500 ci, then the cost issue is not a problem. However, such a large-degree coin cannot be used and there is no need for the people to use, so the circulation field will be greatly restricted.

For ordinary people, their daily income is mostly physical. If converted into copper coins, it is good for an adult to reach the monthly income.

If an adult man without land sells his labor and works for long-term labor, his daily income is about twenty to thirty cents. Even if this person works thirty days a month, his income will not reach one thousand cents (always).

For ordinary people, when buying, selling things and daily consumption, in addition to buying rice and large livestock, the transaction volume is mostly less than a hundred yuan. Even larger transactions are mostly barter. If the two-color coins are to be circulated among the people, there must be enough small-degree currencies.

If the court produces a two-color currency worth 500 citrus, the people will not be able to use it on weekdays because large amounts of coins are completely unrealistic.

The daily wage is twenty cents, thirty cents, and buying a hu of rice costs one or two hundred cents, buying a chicken velvet quilt for two hundred cents, and buying a pig for four hundred cents. Who can use such a large denomination currency in this trivial daily consumption?

If a businessman is doing business, coins with a face value of 500 quotas are useful, but this will limit the circulation of the two-color coins to those cities with developed commercial conditions, and there is no need for other places.

If the imperial court wants to promote new coins, it is to facilitate the people rather than serve merchants. If the cost of making two-color coins is not solved, it will be impossible to make two-color coins practical. As for issuing paper money, it is impossible with the technical capabilities and productivity of this era.

The cost issue of the two-color currency has troubled Yuwen Wen, so even if there is a finished product of the two-color currency, it is not optimistic.

At this time, Yuwen Wen was not qualified to participate in the discussion and decided on the monetary system of the court, but it did not prevent him from preparing for the future. After all, what step a person can do in his career depends on his luck, except for his luck.

If you want to be powerful in the world, you have to be in mind. If you want to sit in and firmly sit in that position, you have to consider the people of the world.

Yuwen Wen looked at Jin Cuodou and Shuangseo Coin in a daze. Zhang Dingfa came from the side and whispered: "King, the army is about to cross the river."

"Hmm? Yes, let's go."

Yuwen Wen collected the coins, rode his horse, and galloped along the long line of travel. The "100,000" army he had worked hard to gather was about to launch an offensive.

One hundred thousand is just a fiction. Yuwen Wen's army, with Huangzhou Army and Hulin Army as the core, is mixed with surrendered soldiers, clan soldiers from all over the country, and barbarian soldiers from the villages, similar to a mixture of a small number of regular official troops and a large number of miscellaneous soldiers, and is about to launch an attack on Ruyin.

This Ruyin is not the Ruyin. The previous Hezhou Prefecture was under Ruyin. Since Yuwen Wen used it as a bargaining chip, he would not go back on his word. The place he wanted to attack was that Yingzhou Prefecture, located on the bank of Yingshui River, was under Ruyin.

The flags of the official army were black flags, and the original flags of the miscellaneous soldiers were varied. After some rectification, the flags of the miscellaneous soldiers were unified into several colors, among which the yellow and white flags were the most conspicuous.
Chapter completed!