Not coins, but a voting board: on 31 July 1990, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia adopted Decision No. 586 on establishing the Bank of Latvia, with 109 votes. In the same sitting, deputies turned to the bank’s president and council, while Pāvils Sakss explained in the hall why the state needed its own issuing centre. The transcript preserves his dry but pointed argument: Latvia could not exist if the money in its circulation was issued in another state.

This happened less than three months after the 4 May declaration, when political independence still had to be filled with working institutions. At first, the Bank of Latvia was more a legal and organisational decision, since the actual takeover of the Soviet banking system began only after the events of August 1991.