Three banks in Paraguay were taken over at the same time, freezing the wages, pensions, and deposits of around 3 million people. This is not a drill, but a real-world stress test: wages can’t be paid, pensions can’t be withdrawn, merchants can’t settle transactions, and ordinary households’ cash flow can break down in an instant. The weakest point in the banking system has never been capital adequacy, but trust. Capital adequacy is a static buffer; trust is a dynamic switch. Once a bank run begins, even the healthiest balance sheet can’t withstand it. In 2007, a bank run on the UK’s Northern Rock saw around £2 billion withdrawn within days. In 2023, Silicon Valley Bank faced around $42 billion in withdrawals in 48 hours and quickly collapsed despite having more than $200 billion in assets. These cases show that liquidity can dry up more quickly—and prove more fatal—than insufficient capital. When liquidity is thinnest in the early hours of the morning, it’s the same in every market: sudden price wicks often happen during those few minutes when nobody is watching the charts. Interbank markets, foreign exchange, and crypto markets are no exception. The term “banking crisis” may sound distant, but the chain reaction is shorter than most people think: one bank is taken over, businesses fail to make payroll, household spending contracts, bad loans at local banks rise, risk appetite plunges, and cross-border capital is rapidly repriced. For ordinary people, diversifying accounts, keeping a cash buffer, and checking the extent of deposit insurance coverage are more practical defenses. For regulators, beyond taking over a bank, it’s crucial to restore payment services quickly and clarify the order of repayments; otherwise, the trust gap will continue to widen. What do you think?