However, as Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross notes, while modern currencies can be printed by central governments, precious metals derive value from their scarcity.

In this infographic from Texas Precious Metals, we compare the value of the world's gold and silver coin production to global money creation.

Total Production Per Person, 2019

We calculated the value of global currency issuance in 2019 as well as precious metal coins minted, and divided by the global population to get total production per person.

Throughout, global money supply is a proxy based on the 5 largest reserve currencies: the U.S. dollar, Euro, Japanese Yen, Sterling Pound, and Chinese Renminbi.

The value of new global money supply was 600 times higher than the value of gold coins minted, and 3,700 times higher than silver coins minted.

Put another way, for each ounce of minted gold coin, the global money supply increased by more than $908,000.