How Much Money Actually Exists in the World? Not Nearly Enough for Google to Pay Russia's Fine

When you think about the richest of the rich — the Jeff Bezoses, Elon Musks, and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world — you start to realize that a lot of money exists in the world. And that's an understatement.

If you add the net worths of each of those three tech giants together, you'd land somewhere in the ballpark of $664 billion, $200 million. However, much of their net worths are tied up in assets like businesses, property, and more instead of cold, hard cash.

But with around 8 billion people on the planet, and a median net worth in the United States of around $190,000, there are plenty of variables to consider — it almost makes our heads spin!

So, how much money does the world actually have?

The actual, factual amount of money circulating throughout the planet varies based on your source and how it's measured. For example, if you're wondering the total value of bank notes and coins in the world, some sources put that number at around $8.28 trillion.

On the other hand, if you factor in travelers checks, as well as demand deposits like checking and savings accounts, that number jumps up to about $48.9 trillion as of late 2022.

When you consider the fact that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Engraving and Printing alone printed about $163 billion worth of paper currency in 2023, it's easy to see how the number can continuously snowball.

However, when calculating how much money exists, you also have to factor in investments and derivatives, like stocks and cryptocurrency — and per Visual Capitalist, "the total global market capitalization of the world’s roughly 80 major stock exchanges is $110.2 trillion," plus an extra $2 trillion when factoring in the market cap of cryptocurrency.

All combined, one of our most prominent estimates for the total money value on the planet is around $194.88 trillion.

That may not seem like a lot, but consider the fact that there are 1,000 billions per trillion.

Now that we know just about how much money exists, it's even more absurd when you learn that Russia has just fined Google for around $20 decillion — a 37-digit number that's about "200 quintillion times larger than the global economy," per GBNews.

The fine is reported by NBC to be the total amount "demanded by 17 Russian television channels and other media outlets whose output has been blocked from YouTube," whose parent company is Google.

However, the Kremlin admitted to NBC that the number was more symbolic than anything.

"Although it is a specific amount, I cannot even say this number, it is rather filled with symbolism," they shared. "The company should not restrict our broadcasters on their platform ... This should be a reason for the Google leadership to pay attention to this and improve the situation."