Content
The good times did not last long, and after a period of time, the drawbacks of physical currencies also appeared. Because there are not many gold mines near Bit Village, mining and smelting gold is too time-consuming and laborious. With the use, gold will always be worn out due to wear, loss or deliberate hoarding. The whole village sat together again and began to discuss countermeasures. At this time, some people said, in fact, you don’t have to really use gold. Just find a piece of paper and write "one gram of gold". As long as the whole village agrees that this piece of paper is equal to one gram of gold, the problem will not be solved. . Others agreed, but at the same time there are new problems: real gold needs to be mined and smelted, gold mines are limited, and mining and smelting also require costs, so no one can produce a large amount of gold out of thin air in a short time, but writing is different. As long as I have enough paper and pens, and write as much as I like, then this will become a lot of paper in Ping Who’s family, and maybe 10,000 sheets of paper can be exchanged for a sheep (actually this will happen Academic inflation).
Everyone thinks about it. But at this time someone proposed a solution: this paper is not valid for anyone writing, we only recognize the words written by the respected old village chief in the village, and everyone knows the old village chief's words. The old village chief wrote some paper, and at the same time gave everyone the same amount of paper according to the gold stocks of each house. For example, the old Zhang family had 200 grams of gold, and the old village chief sent two hundred sheets of "one gram of gold" to Lao Zhang. At the same time, Zhang’s gold was taken away as collateral. In this way, the old village chief collected all the gold in the village to his home, and distributed the equivalent amount of gold written on paper according to the amount of gold handed in by each family. At this point, the villagers can use the paper as gold to trade, and everyone can recognize the old village chief’s characters, and others cannot forge them. In addition, if someone’s paper is too worn out, he can also get the old village chief to exchange for new equivalent paper. In addition, the old village chief promises that if anyone wants to exchange it for real gold, he can just bring the paper back. Will return the equivalent gold to that person. Because the amount of gold written by the old village chief is the same as the amount of gold actually left at home, so as long as you strictly follow the principle of how much paper you destroy and write new paper, every valid piece of paper can always be exchanged for the corresponding real gold .
At this time, Bit Village entered the era of symbolic currency (paper currency). The old village chief assumed the role of the government and the bank.