I recently came across an interesting calculation that makes you think about the global economy. The simple question is: if we took all the cash in the world and divided it equally among every person on the planet, how much money would each person get? It sounds like science fiction, but the numbers are quite real.

The fact is, when economists talk about the money in the world, they mean the M2 money supply — it's not just cash in wallets, but the total of money in circulation plus bank deposits, savings accounts, and other liquid assets that can be quickly converted into cash. Essentially, these are all the funds that people can relatively easily use.

According to data for 2024, how much money is circulating in the world as M2? About 123 trillion dollars. It sounds astronomical, but when divided by 8.1 billion people, it comes out to roughly 15,000 dollars per person. For perspective — that's approximately the cost of a used car or, as analysts like to joke, enough to buy a new Dacia Sandero.

It's interesting to compare this with local data. Let’s take Spain — the situation there is a bit better. Based on calculations at the end of 2024, how much money is in the world relative to the Spanish economy? If you distribute Spain’s M2 money supply across the country’s population, each Spaniard would get about 33,500 dollars. Nearly twice the global average.

This clearly shows how unevenly financial resources are distributed. How much money actually exists in the world is one question, but how it’s distributed is a completely different matter. Global private wealth in 2024 reached 488 trillion dollars, but this includes real estate, assets, and investments that can’t simply be divided equally.

What does this mean for us? Just a reminder that the amount of money circulating in the world as liquid assets is far from the total wealth. Most capital is frozen in assets, creating a huge gap between the theoretical equal distribution and reality. If you're interested in such economic questions, you can check out analytics on Gate about various currencies and assets — they often analyze these kinds of global trends.