By 1873, the decreasing value of silver made it profitable to mint silver in exchange for gold at the Union's standard rate of . Indeed, in all of 1871 and 1872 the French mint had received just 5,000,000 francs of silver for conversion to coin, but in 1873 alone received 154,000,000 francs. Fearing an influx of silver coinage, the member nations of the Union agreed in Paris on January 30, 1874, to limit the free conversion of silver temporarily. By 1878, with no recovery in the silver price in sight, minting of silver coinage was suspended absolutely. From 1873 onwards, the Union was on a de facto gold standard. The law still permitted payment in silver, but custom demanded and enforced payment in gold. The 5 franc silver pieces were "essentially upon the same footing as bank notes". More importantly, because new discoveries and better refining techniques increased the supply of silver, the fixed LMU exchange rate eventually overvalued silver relative to gold. German traders, in particular, were known to bring silver to LMU countries, have it minted into coinage then exchanged those for gold coins at the discounted exchange rate. These destabilizing tactics eventually forced the LMU to convert to a pure gold standard for its currency in 1878. Debasement of the coinage Some members, notably the Papal State, began to debase their currency. The Vatican minted Papal lira coins with an inadequate amount of silver (0.835 fine) and then exchanged them for coins from other countries that had been minted correctly, thus in effect forcing other members of the Union to do the same. According to the BBC, Greece with its "chronically weak economy meant successive Greek governments responded by decreasing the amount of gold in their coins, thereby debasing their currency in relation to those of other nations in the union and in violation of the original agreement". Greece was formally expelled from the Latin Monetary Union in 1908. It was readmitted in 1910, however. Paper money issues According to the Financial Times, another major problem of the LMU was that it failed to outlaw the printing of paper money based on the bimetallic currency. France and Italy exploited this weakness by printing banknotes to fund their own endeavours, effectively "forcing other members of the union to bear some of the cost of its fiscal extravagance by issuing notes backed by their currency". Effect of the Great