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

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.