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Both 資金 and 資本 appear to mean 'funds' or 'capital' but again I do not
understand if or what difference exists between them.
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question
word-choice
Diifference between 資金 and 資本
Partly based on [a thesaurus
entry](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/thsrs/8094/meaning/m1u/%E8%B3%87%E6%9C%AC/).

Both can mean _money with which a person conducts economic activities_ and are
interchangeable to some extent.

資本 is usually money you do or start business with and used more in business or
economics contexts. Some examples:

  * capitalism : 資本主義 (not 資金主義)
  * make an investment : 資本を投下する. It should be less idiomatic to say 資金を投下する.

Another expression worth mentioning would be 体が資本= _The body is the capital_ ,
which means _being physically fit is important in doing something (or
anything)_. In this sense, it is close to 元手 which also means _money you
start/do business with_. The difference is the implied size of business is
smaller for 元手. Related to the other question you posted, it should roughly
hold that 事業：資本 = 商売：元手.

資金 is more like a way of expressing _money_. As such it can be used in
everyday conversations.

  * I don't have money to buy a house. : 家を買う資金がない
  * raise funds : 資金を調達する
  * money laundering : 資金洗浄

The second one might look contradictory to the above comment, but I guess it
is because what startups get is actual money (more or less).

* * *

If you look at any decent company webpage, it has a profile page where 資本金 is
mentioned. I don't know the details, but it is the money with which the owner
started the company.
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**資本** refers to initial properties/resources you prepare or invest to start a
business. Typically, it refers to money, but technically speaking, you can
start a business with anything as 資本. For example, in
[わらしべ長者](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Millionaire), one may say the
protagonist's 資本 was a piece of straw. People often figuratively say 体が資本だ
referring to blue collar workers and athletes whose income is directly based
on their healthy body.

**資本金** , as the kanji 金 suggests, refers to money invested to start a
company. Laypeople use this word loosely, but it's a complicated concept when
used as a strict legal term. The Japanese law requires to you declare the 資本金
when you create and register a company, but it can be as little as one yen.
The actual money to run the company can be borrowed from a bank, but such
money is not called 資本金. 資本金 is a semi-fixed value (e.g., the 資本金 of Nintendo
is 10,065,400,000 yen), and is mostly unrelated to how healthily the company
is run each year.

**資金** is money used to actually run a company every day. Running out of 資金
basically means going bankrupt.
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