[Oberon]

The form that money takes is irrelevant. The number of dollars in the economy, virtual or otherwise, is a creation of government while GDP is a measure of actual wealth.

Granted. But how does one figure "the number of dollars in the economy" when many if not most of those dollars are simply numbers in computers?

I don't mean to go all existential on you. I just find it confusing.

I had the same conundrum in my career as a technical writer. Much of my output was never printed; it went straight to PDF files or HTML to post to the web. I rarely if ever made an actual thing you could hold in your hand, although I wrote and edited quite a few documents. Someone asked me what I did for a living about this time.

I told him "I rearrange electrons."

[Da Bilge Troll]

Naturally, the published values for both "money supply" and GDP are estimates.