system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Asia's Richest Person Lost $5 Billion in Market Turmoil. Where is that money now, physically?

Edit: Just want to correct that the headline says $3.6 billion now. Thanks for all the good answers!
gpt
Nowhere. That money never physically existed.

Imagine you own a painting you think is very valuable. You even have it appraised, and the guy appraising it said 'yeah, this is worth a million dollars'.  Even though you do not have that money in your wallet, you consider yourself a wealthy man, cause hey, if you would sell your painting, you'd have a million bucks.

Except it then turns out that your painting wasn't so valuable after all. Maybe the last guy was wrong, maybe you spill coffee over it. Either way, the value suddenly drops to five bucks. Your overall wealth has gone down, because you no longer own a painting worth a million bucks, but no money has physically left your wallet.

That is the same thing that happened to that guy. He previously had investments valued at an insanely high amount. He never owned that money physically, nobody did, but if he would've sold his shares, he would've had that amount of money. Now in the market turmoil and the revaluation of things, his stock is now worth a lot less. His wealth has gone down, but nothing happened to his physical money.