Therefore, it is not so much by changing their very short-term interest rate instruments that central banks can impact the decisions that matter most for the economy. It is rather by influencing expectations about the evolution of those short-term interest rates in the predictable future.
The reason is straightforward: digital channels can be used to steal a lot of assets with comparatively little effort today. Nowadays, a large proportion of banks’ assets and value-generating capability is stored on hard drives and servers. The technical infrastructure facilitates the managing of bank accounts and grants access to money. But it also provides access to vast sources of data.