The question of how much money is in the world is surely a baffling one. Is it really possible to know how much money really is in existence? As a matter of fact it most definitely is and has to be. If there was no knowledge of all the worth in the world then indeed money would be in and of itself pointless. Value has to be determined and to put a value on a currency, an item or even a trade value must exist and be determined. So how many types of value or money is actually available? Lots and lots of different kinds exist. So I will start to go over a few different ones just to give you a taste of the amount of money in the world.
The most obvious thing that many think of when it comes to money is Shiny stuff. Gold and Silver are known for being a standard of wealth and money since the beginning of time. I think it is because it is finite and that it really has no other practical value. It is not a useful item for the most part. When it comes to silver the world is filled with a rough value of 43.9 billion dollars in above ground silver stock. That is a staggering amount of money that we have attributed to a small mostly useless mineral. Some market research companies like the Intelligent Speculator have talked about the value of silver and its possible interest in owning more of it in the future. So what about Gold?
The amount of gold in the world is roughly 197,596 tonnes of gold. That is a large quantity but what have we valued that amount to be? The value of gold fluctuates a lot but if we call it 1715 a oz then it would be worth approximately 10.9 trillion dollars. That is a crazy amount of money which can be attributed to a shiny metal with no real useful worth. What is amazing to me is that roughly 47% of the wealth of Gold is actually being used for jewelry currently. That is almost half the amount of Gold which is not technically bricked up to be currency. The numbers are simply staggering and it is incredible that this is only a small fraction of the wealth we have deemed to be wealth on earth.
