> I can hardly believe that this is legal. They’re basically committing money that doesn’t exist just yet.

What do you mean "just yet" :-)

I don't really know how likely it is that the money being committed will actually exist when the time comes (Softbank's commitment didn't exist, they had to sell off assets and rope in other investors to meet their commitments).

Maybe it is very likely to exist, but, really, who knows?

IOW, your statement would be equally true by ending the sentence at the word "exist".

Vault cash are actual bills in vaults. It doesn't even include the bills in your wallet or under your mattress.

It's small because few people go to the bank to withdraw a suitcase of $100 bills, it's a weird time series to pull up because it's not really indicative of anything outside of narrow interests for regulators and the mint - it's probably some conspiracy theory trope from crypto bros or something.

Most money exists purely in electronic form these days.

Monetary base [0] which includes the digital money banks have on deposit at the Fed, is over $5 trillion, and even that is tiny compared to M1 [1] which includes the kinds of things backing your money market account, which is around $19T.

When money is invested, they're going to wire it, not pull up with wheelbarrows full of bills.

0. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE 1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL