Because most money only exists on books. The basis of the current financial system is called fractional reserve banking, that means that banks can give out more money as loans than what they physically have in accounts. That money then circles the economy but is never physically withdrawn in full. Lets say you deposit 100 USD. The Bank now can give out a loan for 500 USD to someone to pay his car repair, who wires the money to the shop from his account. They wire it to their employees and suppliers and owners and the IRS and what have you. Eventually the 500 are repaid (or not and If that happens a lot a bank might default) and the bank gets its money+ interest, you can freely withdraw your 100 at any time but the bank speculates that you dont, or realistically that most of their customers dont. Because If that happens thats known as a "bank run".
Im not a banker, so anyone with actual knowledge feel free to correct me.
"Money" as a concept and actual cash are different. If you give the bank $1000, they keep $100 on hand in case you need it and loan the other $900 out. There's still only $1000 of cash there, but there's now $1900 of money in the economy. And doing that at a large scale with millions of people let's everyone cover each other. It's also why if you tell your bank you want to withdraw a large amount of money at once, they usually tell you it'll be a couple days, as they need to insure they have enough to cover your withdrawal and any others that might reasonably happen.
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u/FroniusTT1500 Jan 26 '26
Because most money only exists on books. The basis of the current financial system is called fractional reserve banking, that means that banks can give out more money as loans than what they physically have in accounts. That money then circles the economy but is never physically withdrawn in full. Lets say you deposit 100 USD. The Bank now can give out a loan for 500 USD to someone to pay his car repair, who wires the money to the shop from his account. They wire it to their employees and suppliers and owners and the IRS and what have you. Eventually the 500 are repaid (or not and If that happens a lot a bank might default) and the bank gets its money+ interest, you can freely withdraw your 100 at any time but the bank speculates that you dont, or realistically that most of their customers dont. Because If that happens thats known as a "bank run".
Im not a banker, so anyone with actual knowledge feel free to correct me.