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Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
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[Game of Thrones] How does the Iron Bank protect its gold from theft? And who owns the bank and enjoys its profits?
gpt
**Who owns the Bank?**

It's jointly owned by the descendants of its original founders, plus whichever other wealthy Braavosi have been able to purchase, scheme, or bribe their way into owning portions of the bank and/or sitting on the boards that make decisions and select its officers. Profits are divided between the shareholders according to how much of the Bank they own and its (presumably byzantine; its inner workings are notoriously secretive) interior profit-sharing rules.

**How Does it Protect Its Gold?**

All of Braavos, in a general sense. Anyone wishing to sack the Iron Bank would have to take the City of Braavos, which is protected by a natural harbor and significant land barriers.

All of the other political elite who rely on the Bank for funding would also move to stop any attack on Braavos, which would threaten their own power and throw the entire economy into chaos.

On a smaller scale, they protect their physical assets with high walls, locked vaults, and well-compensated guards like anyone else.

But most importantly, the Iron Bank just doesn't hold as much physical gold as it has on paper. Gold currency is heavy and a perfect target for bandits; it's much easier to exchange paper (not paper currency exactly, but letters and ledgers) that stand in for exchanges of debt and credit. We've been doing this for thousands of years, and Planetos has almost certainly come up with the same innovation.

For example, if the Iron Bank is receiving payments from five Westerosi princes, it can funnel that directly to a Meereenese shipping magnate who is taking out a massive business loan. No gold would actually need to enter the Iron Bank's vaults, and likely none would have to travel across the Narrow Sea at all; this entire exchange can be conducted with letters of credit. The princes repay the interest on their debts by sending either cash or letters of credit to Iron Bank agents, who verify that they're collectible and then let headquarters know the Bank now has possession of those assets. The Bank approves the loan to the shipping magnate with a letter of credit. The magnate would take out a low-interest cash loan from a local moneylender (the moneylender can give a low rate because of the unimpeachable Iron Bank's backing) for any liquid funds they might need and conduct any large purchases through letters of credit themselves.

The wealth of the Iron Bank isn't in the vaults of treasure it has (though it assuredly has many vaults crammed with priceless artifacts). Its wealth is in the debt it holds and its unfailing ability to collect on that debt.