alt Hacker NewsI got curious about how many wheelbarrows of cash $20bn actually is.
Two ways to think about it: weight vs volume.
By weight (assuming all $100 bills):
$20,000,000,000 / $100 = 200,000,000 bills
Each bill is roughly 1g, so total mass is ~200,000 kg
A typical builder’s wheelbarrow can take about 100 kg before it becomes unmanageable
200,000 kg total / 100 kg per wheelbarrow ≈ 2,000 wheelbarrows (weight limit)
By volume:
A $100 bill is ~6.14" × 2.61" × 0.11 mm, which comes out to about 102 cm³ per bill
200,000,000 bills × 102 cm³ ≈ 20,400 m³ of cash
A standard wheelbarrow holds around 0.08 m³ (80 litres)
20,400 m³ total / 0.08 m³ per wheelbarrow ≈ 255,000 wheelbarrows (volume limit)
So,
About 2,000 wheelbarrows if you only care about weight
About 255,000 wheelbarrows if you actually have to fit the cash in
So the limiting factor isn’t how heavy the money is; it’s that the physical volume of the cash is absurd. At this scale, $20bn in $100s is effectively a warehouse, not a stack.
Replies
Something wrong about representing the weight of US dollars in metric units.
I think you’re off by about a factor of 100 on the volume of a single bill. So both cases it’s in the ballpark of 2000 wheelbarrows.
Your volume of a single bill is a bit off.
I think your volume per bill should be 6.14 * 0.0254 * 2.61 * 0.0254 * 0.00011 ≈ 1.137e-6 m³. That means about 227 m³ total volume, or about 2800 wheelbarrows.