First, silver was not the main form of money in ancient times. At first, shells were used as the earliest currency in history. Later, currencies dominated by copper coins began to appear. This kind of currency exchange is very convenient and the cost is not high. Slowly in the Song Dynasty, the economy was extremely prosperous, and paper money began to appear in people's sight, while silver, a currency, only appeared in the late Ming Dynasty. But in the early Ming dynasty, money could not be used as legal tender, because the dynasty respected paper money at that time, so the use of silver was always prohibited.
Second, silver has become the target of public criticism. However, no matter how good paper money is, there are some restrictions. For example, paper money can only be used with a relatively large face value, and it needs to be deposited in a business to have paper money, which is equivalent to the current credit card or check, which is still inconvenient. At that time, because of the lack of copper resources, and some people privately used their own stoves to make money, the market order at that time was rather chaotic, and the quantity was too small, which caused a lot of inconvenience, so some people turned their attention to the silver market.
Third, the mainstream market of silver Due to the above reasons, silver is loved by many people because of its sufficient weight and just right quantity. Many taxes levied by the court are also gold and silver. Not only can it be used as a tax, but it can also be exchanged for grain and silk for circulation, thus breaking the problem of being unusable? Gold and silver commodity trading? Orders. However, it is contradictory that the imperial court still prohibits people from using silver, but it also collects silver as a tax. Therefore, it is more difficult to ban silver. At the root of it, the imperial court did this to make paper money return to the currency, but it didn't help.