Bitcoin Forum

How many USDs are there in the world total. Is there any way of checking?

2,667.575 Billions of Dollars

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE/

Please note that this is base money.  When you count bank deposits etc. as well, this number is higher (but bank deposits aren't really fully money, they have a large component of loans and other assets in them as well, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply for more information.)


Divide this monetary base by 21 million and you'll get a nice number  ;D

Of course that is just the M1 (physical currency + on demand checking accounts)

M2 (M1 + savings accounts, retail money market accounts, retail CD, etc) is ~$10 trillion.

The fed stopped reported M3 but the link below estimates it at ~$15 trillion.   M3 is M2 plus institutional accounts, and eurodollar accounts (dollar denominated accounts outside of the US banking system).

http://www.shadowstats.com/charts/monetary-base-money-supply

Yup.
If he asks the question because he wants to have a measure of bitcoins "market cap" versus dollar "market cap", it makes more sense to look at the monetary base compared to M2 or M3 though.  Well, maybe not at the moment, but in the future bitcoins could be used in a fractional reserve banking system too, which would dilute their value similar to dollar inflation through fractional reserve lending.

2,667.575 Billions of Dollars -> $127027.38 (gotta get in the 38 cents) per bitcoin -> $0.00127 -> 0.127 cents per satoshi.

I don't know why there are so many people saying 21M bitcoins isn't enough... it actually is perfect :D

I agree but I think China and Europe can use Bitcoin too, don't limit your cap to the US.

On the other note: to me a simple answer to how much money is there could be: take a snapshot in time and account for  M1 +M2 + M3 (surly this will allow all loans to be offset with the resulting credits)  = money in said economy,  would that be correct,?

The M measurements are already inclusive.  You shouldn't add them together.

M4 = M4- + ....
M4- = M3 + ....
M3 = M2 + .....
M2 = M1 + ....
M1 = ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#United_States

To further this, check out shadow stats. They like to calculate things based on old standard where governments like to redefine things to make things look better. Here is the link for their money supply charts: http://www.shadowstats.com/charts/monetary-base-money-supply (http://www.shadowstats.com/charts/monetary-base-money-supply)

I think a better way to look at this question is what is the world gdp measured in usd?
It is approximately 55 trillion dollars.

No.

With a PhD in economics you can drag this answer out to hundreds of pages and include some estimates that might have some accuracy but the answer is still "no". 

Yes (with the caveat above).  But it is impossible.  There is no record of all the loans in the world.

Id say we would need price of gold in times when only or nearly only base currency existed, and multiply it by inflation factor. That would be somewhat acurate answer. And when I mean somewhat, I think "in proper level of magnitude"

Theoretically infinite, it all depends on what the central bank, and the commercial banking system decide. On monday you may find trillions dollars available for loan, then by tuesday interest may be adjusted and suddenly there is a shortage of money without anyone touching the total money supply.