20 Mil Réis Banco do Brazil

The Banco do Brazil — distinct from the later Banco do Brasil — was a private commercial bank that received federal authorization to issue currency during the tumultuous early months of the First Brazilian Republic. The 1890 issues coincide directly with the Encilhamento, Finance Minister Rui Barbosa's aggressive credit expansion policy that flooded Brazil with bank-authorized paper and touched off a speculative bubble of remarkable intensity. Multiple banks were granted emission rights simultaneously, producing a chaotic proliferation of notes that the market struggled to absorb.

ABNC produced the plates in New York under contract, a common arrangement for Latin American issuers who lacked domestic security printing capacity. Single-signatory authorization — here Antônio Arnaldo Vieira da Costa alone — was characteristic of the bank's emission structure throughout this series.