Starting with the background, this began life as a photograph of small ripples on a lake. Contrast was increased and then it was converted to a duotone and given the black and dark blue colours.
I have found it useful to build a collection of water ripples as they can often be turned into abstract backgrounds.
A black grid was drawn with straight vertical and horizontal lines.
The Spherize filter gave it the bulge. After selecting it as a circle, it was inverted to make it white then given some Gaussian Blur to make it glow slightly.
Using an image of the globe, all the sea was selected with the Magic Wand, plus a bit of touching up. This selected area was given a uniform colour.
With the land areas clearly defined, the Glowing Edges filter gave the outlines a neon look.
A copy of the globe was made, filled with white, moved to the back and given Gaussian Blur to create the white halo. Here it is with the white grid dragged into place.
Each currency symbol started off a simple piece of yellow type.
The text was rasterized to turn it into a normal layer, with Layer > Rasterize > Type.
The symbol was duplicated and then given a large amount of Motion Blur at zero angle.
Because the result is so weak, it was copied several times. All the layers were merged.
To shape the text, I started with Transform to give the text a strong perspective.
There are a number ways of distorting this text, but the easiest way here seemed to be to use the Shear Filter.
The text line was turned to the vertical then the Shear line was curved and twisted.
The Twirl filter at a low setting also work to give a gentle wave.
As the image is built up, the shapes had to be adjusted a few times.
