system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Most of my money is a number in a bank database. What is there to stop a bank artificially inflating someone's number?
gpt
It is not just 1 number, it's the sum of a transaction history that is cross-referenced to the various accounts that put money in or took it out of your account. If you just made one number bigger, the whole thing wouldn't balance and that would be picked up by the auditors/accountants.