Why don't banks charge to hold your assets? They're liabilities. You should have to pay the bank interest if you expect to be made whole. Rhetorically speaking, where is the restitution money coming from?

If you're making money in interest, dividends, capital appreciation, market value, etc., that's because your capital is being employed. That's risky and the profit (or loss) should be a function of that risk.

Banking as a pure store of assets feels decoupled from that objective.

I do think SVB depositors being made whole was good, but a hypothetical widespread failure event across dozens of big banks would be catastrophic. There should be easy liquid stores of value that are essentially zero risk for this type of failure, even if you have to pay for them.