How much Money is there in the World?

Absolutely loads. This is a generalisation but the broad consensus in that it’s somewhere in the trillions. There is a dispute over this and the idea that there is a fixed amount seems ludicrous as keeping track of all transactions and the decline of physical legal tender has left experts all at sea trying to figure it out.

Firstly the CIA believes that there is around $80 trillion in the world today if you include what they call ‘broad money’. This would be inclusive of almost all types of asset. However, this figure drastically drops to around $5 trillion if you simply include the amount the Bank for International Settlements has kept track of over the years.

So, how much of that does the richest man alive have? For a while, Bill Gates sat at the top of the heap and everyone knew it but now the new kid on the block Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has around $105 billion and that makes him not only the richest man in the world right now but also the richest man in history.  In 2018 Jeff Bezos’ total net worth increases by around $231,000 a minute. He earns more than most doctors’ annual salaries in sixty seconds.

A better way to divide up all the money in the world would probably be a country-by-country basis. The market capitalisation of the UK’s stock market is around 5% of the worlds. China’s percentage sits at 10% and the USA at a massive 38%. The mini economic powerhouse of California specifically has a whopping $2.9 trillion.

Further interrogation as to what constitutes money draws even more lines in the sand therefore complicating matters further when trying to surmise what the grand total would actually be. Bitcoin is the fastest growing asset type in the world right now but even that isn’t really a drop in the ocean comparatively speaking. Not that $100 billion would go amiss in any of our households, I’m sure. Furthermore the type of asset that seems to hold the least value but is still just about comparable is that of silver which, it’s estimated, is supposed to be worth around $17 billion in its entirety.

Astoundingly even though the figure for total money as estimated by the Bank for International Settlements is around $5 trillion, Marketwatch posted a report where all the statistics in this article can be verified that also states that there is around $7.6 trillion in bank notes and coins across the world, a figure that exceeds the number proposed by the BIS. Furthermore Gold is around $7.7 trillion so is almost in complete counterbalance to countries agreed legal tender.