Nice to Steem you @markzuckerbergs, and thanks for the bibliographical references ! I'll much appreciate posts like this in the future SteemCyclopedia :-)

Another prominent contributor in building nowaday's fraudulent currency system was John Law, Finance Minister under the French Regent, who in 1615 invented "printed money" (the blacksmith's receipts you mention, generalized at the scale of a country), forcing all France inhabitants to convert their silver and gold coins to that monkey money.