Chapter 33 New Currency

In his spare time, Peter would go to the market. It was a place for the exchange of various information.

The most common items on the market were bread, vegetables, and cloth, and some luxury goods were brought by foreign merchants. The most popular items were building materials, stones, wood, and some copper and iron products.

Some people listened to the propagandists reading the latest orders, while whispering below.

"There are too many things being built in various places recently, and the price of stone has risen to the sky."

"Yes, now you can't buy it even if you want to."

It seems that Peter's construction plan has caused the prices of some commodities to rise sharply. And it has also attracted a lot of trade, and this year's tariffs can be said to have risen sharply.

Of course, food prices are still relatively stable. People's lives will not be affected for the time being.

In addition to commodity prices, there is another problem that bothers people, that is currency.

It is very difficult to trade various currencies in the hands of the people, so most of the transactions are still carried out in the form of barter.

Compared with the Chinese dynasties, which have been implementing the same standard currency system for most of the time, Europe has always been in bulk style. Each country and even each noble and bishop has the right to mint and issue their own currency. Although they claim that their currency is made of pure gold and pure silver, only a fool would believe the words of these greedy nobles. God knows how much lead and copper they added to the silver coins. This not only led to the proliferation of currency types, but also made the market full of bad currency, which was very unfriendly to trade activities.

In the Middle Ages, just calculating the fineness value of various currencies was a big deal, not to mention the exchange rate between several currencies, which required a long time to learn and master. A British businessman received more than 22 currencies in Flanders.

In addition to the wide variety of currencies, the most troublesome thing is the exchange rate between currencies of various countries, because it will change all the time, and the income of merchants will become more and more difficult to control due to changes in interest rates, because sometimes many currencies are still circulating well in the first half of the year, and become worthless in the second half of the year due to war and other reasons.

It is also possible that a certain currency had a good credit in the past few years because of the insistence of its king and was sought after by merchants, but when the old king died and the new king succeeded to the throne and issued currency excessively, the credit would collapse, and merchants from other countries would no longer be willing to accept the currency of merchants in that country, or it must be devalued to continue to circulate.

British currency is the best example in this regard. The currency of England has always had a credit that other countries envy in terms of exchange rate, and the currency has a sufficient gold and silver content. But when it came to Henry VIII of the Tudor Dynasty, he issued currency excessively to satisfy his notorious selfish desires, which made British merchants very embarrassed in the international market for a while.

Although Wallachia had begun to mint coins, their quality could not be compared with foreign currencies. Therefore, minting new coins became a new task.

Peter had the right to mint coins, and he built a mint near Tulcea. The silver produced by the local silver mine was processed into currency with sufficient content.

Peter returned to the city hall, and the people of the mint were already waiting there.

A sample silver coin appeared in front of Peter, with a majestic lion on the front and Peter's flag pattern on the back.

"How much silver does this silver coin contain?"

"Sir, we mint coins according to the currency standard of Venice. The silver content is 90%, and the rest is replaced by lead or copper."

Such a silver content is already a real silver coin. He will replace those cumbersome currencies and become the currency of Wallachia and Moldova.

In addition to silver coins, the mint also minted copper coins. Excluding the gold, silver and copper price ratio and the fineness exchange problem, one silver coin can be exchanged for 20 copper coins.

"Sir, what is the name of the new coin?" asked the attendant on the side.

Peter said without thinking.

"Lei and Bani, let's call them these two names."

Lei means lion, and Bani means money. This meaning is straightforward enough.

"Let the mint run at full capacity, the use of currency is still very large."

"Yes, sir"

Peter's idea is very clear, that is, to unify the domestic currency. As for why there are no gold coins, it is because they are not needed now. Ducat and florin are enough for the time being.

A large amount of silver ore and copper ore were sent to the mint, and they were processed into lei and bani. Then they flowed into the hands of the people through various channels.

At the same time, in Moldova and Dobruja, street criers also read out the orders of the lords and governors.

The people were all skeptical, and they were afraid that this was a trick. Let the lords take away the wealth they had accumulated with great difficulty.

This can't go on. If the people don't accept the new currency, then other things can't go on. For this reason, Peter asked the institution he founded to exchange half of the reserves for lei. At the same time, let Constanta, Tulcea and other port areas take the lead in using lei and bani.

Constanta was the first to accept lei and bani, because the local chamber of commerce began to pay lei, and the currency exchange office also began to display the exchange of lei.

"Lei, it looks very heavy." A merchant who had exchanged said.

"Of course, this is made entirely according to the composition of Venetian silver coins. Even though the source of silver is so scarce, our kind lord still made currency of sufficient value."

The full-value lei soon gained the support of merchants, and the lei became the main currency of Dobruja. Merchants and ordinary people used lei and bani in large quantities. This made the mint a little busy for a while, and in order to mint enough coins, the mining of silver mines was also increased.

There was a lack of enough craftsmen in all walks of life, which also gave some people abroad an opportunity. Some craftsmen from the Grand Duchy of Suzdal and the Golden Horde came to Moldova with the people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

At this time, the Golden Horde was about to perish, and the fight between Tokhtamysh and Timur turned the entire middle and lower reaches of the Volga River upside down. Those controlled craftsmen naturally fled westward, and Moldova was one of their targets.

Peter, like Grand Duke Dmitry of Moscow, accumulated his strength and then delivered a fatal blow when necessary.