At the start of the 18th century, the Ottomans had been moving towards a European-style currency system for about 30 years. The European system used the same three metals as everyone in the "Old World": copper, silver, and gold. Copper was kind of a "who cares" metal; poor people could use it to buy junk and trash. Silver was used for mid-level business, such as craftpeoples’ wages, sacks of grain rather than loaves of bread, and domestic animals, among other things.
After centuries of a single silver denomination (penny, denaro, etc.), Europe introduced a four-piece system (groat, groschen, etc.), followed by a twelver system (schilling, etc.), and finally, the thaler or crown (canonically 240 pence, but with variations on that theme).
By the 18th century, the European thaler had diverged…
