I often wonder how money is stored. It can't be just a number on a computer in a bank, right? Otherwise some Russian bank could just increase that number to whatever they like. And say "Look, we own 100 Trillion USD. Now let's go shopping.". So I guess USD needs to be recognized by the US somehow? Could the US simply "void" all USD that are owned by Russia?
> I often wonder how money is stored. It can't be just a number on a computer in a bank, right? Otherwise some Russian bank could just increase that number to whatever they like. And say "Look, we own 100 Trillion USD. A bank could easily create fake money into its own accounts, but it would have trouble transferring that money over to other banks. I wrote extensively about this topic here: https://www.attejuvonen.fi…
In fact, isn't that indistinguishable (mathematically) from paying interest? The bank's internal accounts all go from X to Y. In theory, the bank should made more money that that in total, so at any given point the sum of all accounts is less than the banks money and accounts recieveable (usually via loans). And the bank can provide that money to other people if needed. But if a bank paid 1000% APR on savings accounts, all that would happen is the bank goes belly up and a lot of those accounts won't be worth the numbers they claim to have.