Money

This 1-Minute Animation Puts $110 Billion of Wealth in Perspective

Published

7 months ago

November 25, 2019

Just over a week ago, Bill Gates reclaimed the familiar title of the world’s richest person after seeing his net worth jump to the $110 billion mark.

The recent gains can be attributed to a surge in Microsoft’s stock price, after the tech company surprised the market by winning a $10 billion cloud contract from the Pentagon. This also pushed Gates past fellow Seattle billionaire Jeff Bezos, who currently holds a $108.7 billion fortune.

With these numbers topping a hundred billion dollars, they can be difficult to comprehend. Luckily for us, Twitter user @betty__cam put together a short animation that simplifies things.

$110 Billion, Visualized

The following one minute animation starts with the median household wealth in the United States of $61,937, working its way up to the Bill Gates fortune of $110 billion:

Along the way, the animation points out comparable dollar amounts to put things in perspective.

This includes the amount that people should save for retirement ($1.33 million), Katy Perry’s mansion in Beverly Hills ($19 million), settlements paid by the NYPD in a year ($230 million), and even the wealth of Elon Musk ($27.1 billion).

Millions vs. Billions

Part of the impact of the animation comes as it flips from millions to billions of dollars.

For example, the retirement figure of $1.33 million is clearly a solid chunk of money — but when that turns into a tiny speck in contrast to $1 billion, it’s evident that we’re talking about very different scales.

This is also illustrated when we look at seconds:

1 million seconds = 11.5 days
1 billion seconds = 31.71 years
110 billion seconds = 3,488.1 years

Go back a million seconds in time, and we’re talking about last week — go back Bill Gates’ wealth in seconds, and you’ll be hanging out with the Ancient Babylonians.

The Equities Effect

The short animation helps put this immense amount of wealth in perspective, but it also has raises a fair question: why is Bill Gates’ net worth growing if he signed The Giving Pledge, a commitment to give away at least half of his net worth to philanthropic causes?

The disconnect lies in the fact that fluctuations in Gates’ net worth are largely connected to the movement of Microsoft’s stock price, as well as the stock market in general.

Even though he’s no longer an active officer of the tech giant, Gates still owns close to 1% of outstanding shares — and with Satya Nadella at the helm, Microsoft’s market capitalization has soared to a record-setting $1.15 trillion. Gates also has over 60% of his assets invested in the stock market, which sits at all-time highs as well.

For the above reasons, Bill Gates gave away $35 billion in wealth in 2019, but still ended up gaining $16 billion in overall net worth.

Up Next

The Future of the CFO: From Number Cruncher to Value Driver

Don't Miss

Visualizing the New Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

Comments

Technology

Visualizing the Rise of Digital Payment Adoption

By 2023, digital transaction values could reach $6.7T globally—catalyzed by digital commerce and mobile payments. COVID-19 is only accelerating this trend.

Published

3 days ago

June 29, 2020

Dorothy Neufeld

Digital Payments: The Evolution of Currency

Over the last decade, the digital payments landscape has undergone a structural shift.

Consumer behaviors are changing—moving towards contactless and cashless transactions. Meanwhile, as the magnitude of COVID-19 grows, these trends have only accelerated.

Today’s infographic navigates the digital payments ecosystem, exploring its history and innovative technologies, and how it continues to grow as a solution of choice for trillions of dollars of transactions each year.

Digital Payments Timeline

The origins of digital payments began over 25 years ago with then 21 year-old entrepreneur Dan Kohn in Nashua, New Hampshire, who sold a CD over the internet via credit card payment.

1994: First online purchase is made
A CD of Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales is sold for $12.48 on NetMarket.
1997: First mobile payments and first contactless payments
Coca-Cola installs two vending machines in Helsinki that accept payment by text message.
1999: Paypal launches electronic money transfer service
Early on, PayPal’s user base grew nearly 10% daily. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and venture capitalist Peter Thiel were among its co-founders.
2003: Alibaba launches Alipay in China
Today, the mobile payment platform has witnessed stunning growth — leveraging digital wallets accepted by merchants in over 50 countries and regions.
2007: M-PESA creates the first payments system for mobile phones
Kenya-based M-PESA launched its mobile banking and microfinancing service. Today, it has over 37 million active users on its platform across Africa.
2009: Bitcoin enables secure, untraceable payments
Satoshi Nakamoto develops the first decentralized payment network in the world.
2013: WeChat Pay is rolled into the popular messaging platform
By 2018, it surpasses 800 million monthly active users.
2014: Apple Pay launches
By 2023, over $2 trillion of mobile payment transactions could be authenticated by biometric technology.

As technological advances continue to unfold, advances in digital payment technologies are creating ripple effects globally.

Geographical Differences in Adoption

Unsurprisingly, the sheer volume of digital payments has continued to grow at a double-digit pace, now surpassing the $4.1 trillion mark.

How do cashless payments break down across different countries?

Country	Daily Average Volume of Cashless Payments	Average Annual Cashless Payments Per Person
Singapore	13M	831
South Korea	77M	547
Sweden	15M	529
Netherlands	24M	505
U.S.	444M	495
UK	82M	448
Canada	40M	393
Belgium	12M	372
France	64M	363
Switzerland	7M	299
Germany	61M	269
Russia	95M	237
Spain	24M	185
Brazil	95M	166
China	543M	142
Italy	18M	111
Turkey	17M	77
Indonesia	30M	42
Mexico	14M	40
India	67M	18

Source: BIS

Singapore has the highest number of cashless payments per individual, averaging 831 cashless payments annually. The country’s robust e-commerce market is supported by high-speed, reliable internet and a young, tech-savvy population.

With e-commerce spending accounting for about 6% of South Korea’s national GDP, it is another leading purveyor of a cashless society. Meanwhile, Sweden is projected to become a cashless nation as early as 2023.

Pivotal factors—including core infrastructure, consumer behavior and rising revenues—provide a glimpse into the rapidly changing payment horizon.

The Future of Digital Payments

As transactions rise, a number of other technological innovations could be instrumental to shaping the evolution of the digital payments industry:

Messaging-app payments
Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat can leverage the reach of billions of users.
Voice-activated commands
Paying for gas, groceries, or retail via voice could soar.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) payments
Bank of America and Visa are investing heavily into P2P partnerships.
Cryptocurrencies
Over one million transactions take place daily on average.
Biometric payments
Smartphone biometric security features could spur traction across digital payments.
Facial recognition
May soon replace QR codes across retail, transit, and airports in China.
Crypto wallet adoption
Blockchain wallet users are predicted to soar to 200 million by 2030.
Hardware & in-store interfaces
Square, Stripe, and Clover are driving new mobile processing integrations.

The $4.1T digital payments ecosystem is facing a notable transition, catalyzed by a wave of global advancements and disruption. As the industry continues to widen its reach, consumers and investors alike can benefit from the shift towards a cashless economy.

Money

The Racial Wealth Gap in America: Asset Types Held by Race

White families are more likely to hold assets of any type compared to other races. This chart highlights the substantial racial wealth gap.

Published

3 weeks ago

June 12, 2020

Jenna Ross

The Racial Wealth Gap

People of color have faced economic inequality for generations, and the recent wave of Black Lives Matter protests has renewed discussions on these disparities.

Compared to White families, other races have lower levels of income and net worth. They are also less likely to hold assets of any type. In fact, 19% of Black families have zero or negative net worth, while only 9% of White households have no wealth.

Today’s chart uses data from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances to highlight the racial wealth gap, and the proportion of households that own different kinds of assets by racial group.

Asset Types Held By Race

The financial profile between racial groups varies widely. Below is the percentage of U.S. families with each type of asset, according to the most recent survey from 2016.

	White	Black	Hispanic	Other
Primary Residence	73%	45%	46%	54%
Vehicle	90%	73%	80%	80%
Retirement Accounts	60%	34%	30%	48%
Family-owned Business Equity	15%	7%	6%	13%
Publicly-traded Stocks	61%	31%	28%	47%

Vehicles are the most common asset across all racial groups, followed by a primary residence.

However, the level of equity—or home value less debts—families have in their houses differs by race. White families have equity of $215,800, whereas Black and Hispanic households have net housing wealth of $94,400 and $129,800 respectively.

In addition, White households are more likely to hold financial assets such as retirement accounts, family businesses, and stocks. These assets are instrumental in building wealth, and are prominent in the wealth composition of America’s richest families.

With fewer people of color holding these assets, they miss out on higher average returns than low-risk assets, as well as the power of compound interest. These portfolio differences are striking, but they are not the most important contributing factor in the racial wealth gap.

Demographic and Economic Variations

White households are also more likely to have demographic characteristics that are associated with wealth. According to the U.S. Federal Reserve, they are:

Older, with more than half of households age 55 and up
More highly educated, with 51% having some type of degree
Less likely to have a single parent
More likely to have received an inheritance

For example, 39% of White heads of households have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 23% and 17% for Black and Hispanic household heads, respectively. However, education doesn’t fully explain the wealth inequities.

Racial Wealth Gap by Education

Enormous wealth disparities exist between families with the same education level. Even in cases where Black and Hispanic household heads have obtained a bachelor’s degree, their families’ median wealth of $68,000 and $78,000 respectively is still lower than the $98,000 median wealth for White families where the head has no bachelor’s degree.

After accounting for demographic factors, researchers still found there were considerable inequities. What, then, could be primarily responsible for the racial wealth gap?

The Income Gap

While previous research found that the wealth gap is “too big” to be explained by a difference in income, a recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland offers a new perspective. Focusing on White and Black U.S. households only, researchers analyzed the dynamics of wealth accumulation over time, as opposed to previous studies that considered short time periods.

They found that income inequality was the primary contributor to the racial wealth gap. According to the model, if Black and White households had earned the same labor income from 1962 onwards, the Black-to-White wealth ratio would have reached 0.9 by 2007.

Moving forward, the study concludes that policy changes will likely have a positive impact if they address issues contributing to income gaps. This includes reducing racial discrimination in the labor market, and creating programs, such as mentorships, that improve environments for specific racial subgroups.