My hotel is full of emperors throughout history.

"bank?"

Old Zhu raised an eyebrow again.

"What's this strange thing again?"

"It sounds a bit like a money exchange."

Zhu Di pondered for a moment before speaking.

"Similar to a money exchange, but the scale and operation are completely different."

Chen Mo shook his head.

"You can think of it as a super-large money house of unprecedented scale, owned by the imperial court, or rather, the royal family."

"A mega-bank?"

The emperors immediately became interested.

After all, who would turn down money?

Chen Mo pondered for a moment before speaking.

"First of all, this royal bank accepts deposits from everyone—whether they are royalty, powerful families, or ordinary people, they can all deposit their money here."

Li Shimin frowned.

"But why would they deposit the money?"

Chen Mo glanced at him and explained.

"We'll give them a receipt, promising that they can withdraw the money at any time, and... we'll even give them a little bit of interest, meaning that not only will we not charge them any storage fees, but they can also make a little money from their deposits."

"I'm holding his money for him? Not only do I not accept payment, but I'm also being asked to pay him?"

Ying Zheng was puzzled.

"Why should I?!"

Liu Che and Li Shimin also looked at Chen Mo with puzzled expressions.

"Won't we lose money if things continue like this?"

Chen Mo smiled slightly.

"We definitely won't lose money; on the contrary, we can use this money to make more money!"

"The bank won't let these deposits sit in the warehouse and get moldy."

"It will lend this money to those who need it at a higher interest rate!"

Chen Mo thought for a moment and gave an example.

"For example, a capable and insightful merchant might want to form a caravan to trade in the Western Regions, but if he doesn't have enough capital, he can apply for a loan from the Royal Bank."

"For example, if a disaster strikes a certain area and the local government needs to urgently allocate funds for relief, but the national treasury takes time to allocate funds, it can first borrow from the Royal Bank for a short period of time."

"Even if the imperial court wanted to build a large-scale water conservancy project but did not have enough cash on hand, it could issue bonds through the Royal Bank, which was equivalent to borrowing money from all depositors to do the work, with a promise to repay the principal and interest in the future."

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes lit up.

"This idea is brilliant! It's like using the people's money to run the government's affairs! And it avoids the public outcry and resentment that comes with raising taxes!"

"That makes perfect sense!" Chen Mo nodded. "Moreover, having the royal family control the banks is tantamount to controlling the flow of funds throughout the land."

Chen Mo looked at Zhu Yuanzhang and the others.

"If you want any industry to develop, you can provide low-interest loans through banks."

"If you want to restrict a particular industry, you can raise the loan threshold and interest rates. This is much gentler and more effective than directly issuing administrative orders to impose restrictions."

Upon hearing this, Liu Che praised it highly.

"Brilliant! If this had existed earlier, why would I have needed to implement the infamous 'counting and reporting' system that caused so much resentment? With this bank, I could simply use the money of wealthy merchants for my own purposes!"

Ying Zheng nodded slightly.

"I like this method of centralizing all the wealth in the world without having to worry about people complaining!"

Chen Mo looked at their expressions, smiled, and continued speaking.

"That's only one point. Secondly, banks can issue 'paper money'!"

"Paper money?" Zhu Di asked in confusion. "There were paper money and paper currency in the Song Dynasty, but they had many problems and were often devalued like waste paper."

At this point, Zhu Di glanced at Zhu Yuanzhang with a strange look in his eyes, but hesitated to speak.

Zhu Yuanzhang felt extremely uncomfortable under Zhu Di's hesitant and strange glance. When he thought about the dismal state of his "Da Ming Bao Chao" (Great Ming Treasure Notes), which were declining and almost worthless, he felt embarrassed.

He snorted coldly, glaring at Zhu Di with a hint of embarrassment and anger.

"Is there anything you want to say? You're stammering like a woman! Are you trying to stir up trouble about our precious paper money again?!"

Zhu Di, having been exposed by his father, decided to go all out.

He shrugged, his tone tinged with helplessness and a hint of mockery.

"Father, you're the one who told me to say this. Our Ming Dynasty paper money... isn't it just like the paper money and paper money of the Song Dynasty, with the same problem?"

"They printed quite quickly, but they didn't control themselves from the beginning. They printed too much and too poorly, and there was nothing substantial to back it up, so it became less and less valuable."

"In the end, people were practically using it as toilet paper."

Old Zhu's face instantly turned as black as the bottom of a pot, and the veins on his hand gripping the belt bulged, as if the "Hongwu brand family whip" was about to be drawn again.

"You little brat! What do you know!" Old Zhu roared. "Back then, the imperial court had many expenses! The Northern Yuan was not yet pacified, and everything needed to be rebuilt! We... we had no choice!"

"There's really no other way!"

Zhu Di sighed, his face full of helplessness.

"I also printed a lot of them when I was fighting in the northern desert."

"Now, a string of Ming Dynasty paper money is only worth a few dozen coins."

Upon hearing this, Li Shimin, Liu Che, and the others' expressions changed drastically, and they all looked at Chen Mo.

Chen Mo noticed the gazes of the others, smiled, and spoke.

"Therefore, what we are issuing is not just paper money, but Royal Credit banknotes!"

Chen Mo explained.

"What's the difference between this and our Ming Dynasty paper money?"

Old Zhu frowned and couldn't help but mutter to himself.

"The difference is huge!"

Chen Mo continued.

"It uses the country's tax revenue and the gold and silver in the national treasury as credit guarantees, stipulating that it can be exchanged for gold and silver at a fixed ratio."

"In other words, I can only print as much money as I have in gold, silver, and other assets!"

"Instead of printing money whenever I'm short of cash! If you print money like that, the price of paper money will plummet!"

Chen Mo couldn't help but complain.

"After all, paper money is just a piece of paper!"

"How much value do you think it truly holds? It mainly depends on whether the people recognize it!"

"If the people recognize its value, then it's valuable; if the people don't, then it's worthless!"

Why is money sometimes worthless?

Old Zhu was completely confused.

"Shouldn't we just say it costs a certain amount, and that's the price we're talking about?"

"It's still money, no matter what!"

Chen Mo thought for a moment and gave an example.

"Putting everything else aside, take my hotel as an example. If my hotel were a country, everything in it would have its own value."

As he spoke, Chen Mo casually took out a piece of white paper.

"I have a piece of paper here. I tell it's 100 yuan and you can buy 100 yuan worth of things from me."

"If you bring me this, I'll accept it and be willing to sell it to you. Otherwise, I won't accept anything else!"

The emperors looked at the paper; it was just an ordinary white sheet of paper, nothing special about it.

Chen Mo then pointed to the glass he had just taken out.

"To give another example, this glass can be bought for one hundred yuan."

The emperors nodded.

Chen Mo handed the paper to Zhu Biao, then took it back and gave him the glass.

"Okay! Now I've sold the glass for one hundred yuan."

"I can use the hundred yuan to buy other things at the hotel."

The emperors nodded again.

"Let's take another hypothetical scenario: you're about to go to war, but you're short of money, so you start printing money."

Then, Chen Mo took out ten more sheets of paper.

"But now I have 1,100 yuan!"

"So here's the question..."

Chen Mo shrugged.

"If I were to buy a cup with just one hundred yuan—which is practically just a piece of paper—would you still be willing to sell it to me?"

Ying Zheng pondered for a moment, then shook his head.

"That's absolutely impossible! You sold it to me for a hundred dollars! And you want to buy it back for a hundred dollars? There's no such thing as a free lunch!"

Liu Che pondered for a moment, as if he understood something, and a glint of light flashed in his eyes.

"So, what Mr. Chen means is... money is worthless?"