Crypto World
Inflation is outpacing wage growth again, squeezing Americans’ paychecks
Wage growth for U.S. workers has cooled substantially from the pandemic period while inflation remains elevated, a trend that is adding to economic pressures.
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Americans face a renewed squeeze on their paychecks as inflation once again rises faster than wage growth, putting further pressure on consumer wallets.
“A substantial number of Americans are worse off, their incomes are not keeping up with the price increases right now,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told CNBC.
Consumer prices rose 3.4% in August from a year earlier, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Average hourly earnings, meanwhile, increased just 3.1% over the same period, according to a separate BLS report released Friday. Real average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.1% from July and were down 0.3% from a year earlier in August.
The gap between inflation and wage growth is a stark reminder that workers are losing purchasing power.
“The basics are that inflation is wiping out wage gains,” said Long, adding that April marked a clear turning point after a lengthy stretch in which wage growth had generally exceeded inflation.
From May 2023 until about April of this year, workers had been slowly regaining ground.
In fact, Long first started charting the inflation-wage growth relationship a year ago to make the opposite point — that things were improving and even as Americans remained frustrated at the time by the higher overall price level, wages were gradually catching up.
But that progress began reversing this spring as energy costs jumped.
“That’s what’s just hard to watch. Things were getting better, and now that improvement has blown up,” she said.
Energy remains a major source of pressure now, with gasoline prices rising 3.9% in August alone, accounting for more than one-third of the consumer price index’s gain. Diesel touched $6 per gallon on Friday for the first time amid fuel supply disruptions arising from wars in Iran and Ukraine.
Long ties the shift in household finances to the surge in energy prices following the war in Iran. Navy Federal previously estimated that gasoline prices jumped 21% in March, helping push its measure of car ownership costs to a record.
‘Going to be tough for a long time’
Long said it is difficult to see inflation falling substantially while geopolitical pressures continue, particularly as wage growth slows.
“It’s going to be tough for a long time,” she said.
The best-case outcome, she believes, could be for wage growth and inflation to converge again around the beginning of 2027. “But that’s still going to feel pretty miserable on Main Street if inflation equals wage growth,” Long said.
A prolonged squeeze on purchasing power is already starting to show up in consumer spending. Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, and Long expects households to become more cautious as their paychecks buy less.
Consumers are adjusting
The squeeze and the change in consumer spending habits are starting to show up in data as well.
Data from YouGov shows that higher-income shoppers are more likely to shop for groceries at Costco, while Walmart Supercenter is the preferred grocery store for middle- to lower-income households.
A similar shift into spending more at warehouses and discount stores is already showing up in Navy Federal’s internal spending data, which covers about 15 million members, Long said.
“People who used to shop at Whole Foods are now at Costco, Aldi, and so you can see that people are still really trying to stretch every dollar,” Long said, adding that the behavior is appearing “almost across the income spectrum.”
“The frustration is real on inflation and affordability,” she said.
Tom Lee says the next 12 months will be “really bullish” for crypto. The Wall Street strategist has reason to hope he is right, because the company he chairs sits about $5 billion underwater.
Lee runs research at Fundstrat Global Advisors and chairs BitMine Immersion Technologies, which holds 5.93 million ether.
The Worst is Over for Crypto Markets?
His first argument is that the pain already happened. On October 10 last year, a threat of 100% tariffs on China set off the largest liquidation crypto has seen. More than $19 billion in leveraged bets vanished in a day.
The borrowed money went with it, Lee says. He reads the bottom of crypto’s four-year cycle, a rhythm many traders use to time the market, as next month.
Prices have not caught up. Bitcoin (BTC) trades near $77,315, roughly 39% below its record above $126,000, set days before that crash. Ether has added 3.2% in 24 hours to about $2,533.
“I think it’s going to be a really bullish period for crypto for the next 12 months,” Lee told Wealthion.
A $20 Trillion Bet on Wall Street
The bigger idea is tokenization. That means moving stocks, bonds and funds onto blockchains instead of the slow back-office systems banks run today. BlackRock chief Larry Fink has said every asset can be tokenized.
Lee did the arithmetic. Shift $100 trillion of assets on chain, keep 1% of it, and that is $1.1 trillion a year in income. Valued like a normal business, that is a $20 trillion prize.
However, Lee’s math assumes the assets move. Theo chief investment officer, Iggy Ioppe, calls wrapping an asset and parking it “tokenization theater.” BeInCrypto Research’s Tokenization 2026 report counted $60 billion (0.06% of 1% of the number Lee is pricing) on chain as of May 31, with 56% of that value seeing no weekly transfers.
Washington votes Tuesday on whether to debate the CLARITY Act, which would hand the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) control of spot crypto markets. Lee said the agency already acts that way.
The Part He Does Not Advertise
None of this is neutral. BitMine’s ether is about $5 billion underwater, BeInCrypto reported this month. In August, Lee said fear could push Bitcoin toward $150,000.
“I might just say the real question that people need to ask is do they want to be right or do they want to make money?” he posed.
Fundstrat has advised a 2% crypto allocation for more than a decade. In client accounts that took it, he said, crypto is now more than 85% of the portfolio.
The post Tom Lee Says Crypto Will Be “Really Bullish” For the Next 12 Months appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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On-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed earlier today that Revolut had disclosed highly sensitive personal and financial information belonging to certain customers after receiving what appeared to be an authentic government request.
The company sent emails to the affected users, admitting that the exposed records included passports, verification selfies, addresses, and complete Bitcoin transaction history.
What Was Exposed
In the email sent to customers and revealed by ZachXBT on his Telegram page, Revolut explained that it received a request for information that appeared to originate from a legitimate government agency. The sender was not merely spoofing an address that looked official. The request came from an unauthorized email account using the government agency’s actual email domain and carried valid domain authentication credentials, the company added.
Revolut fulfilled the request under the belief that it was legit. The disclosed information potentially included certain customers’ full names, dates of birth, occupations, home addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. More sensitive material included copies of passports and/or driver’s licenses and the selfie images clients had supplied during the verification process. The good news, according to the company, is that biometric facial telemetry itself was not compromised.
However, the firm said it has provided financial information, including account statements containing IBANs, account-opening dates and wallet reference numbers, as well as withdrawal records and full transaction history, including BTC transactions.
So far, Revolut has not publicly named the government agency involved, and the notice sent to customers does not indicate whether passwords, private keys, or their funds were accessed.
Going Against the Rich?
The on-chain sleuth described the incident as “likely limited in size,” as it seemed that the perpetrators focused only on high-net-worth users. However, this hasn’t been confirmed either independently or by Revolut itself. In addition, the company hasn’t disclosed the actual number of affected clients.
Given the available information as of press time, the incident appears to be an unauthorized disclosure rather than a direct compromise of Revolut’s infrastructure. The company itself instructs government and law-enforcement bodies to submit official information requests through a dedicated channel.
The post Revolut Exposed Passports and Bitcoin Records After Fake Government Request: Report appeared first on CryptoPotato.
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Nvidia is in talks to back the much-awaited Anthropic IPO (initial public offering) with as much as $10 billion. The money would help the artificial intelligence company chase the largest stock market debut on record.
Reuters reported the talks on Friday. Anthropic is seeking up to $100 billion at a valuation near $2 trillion, and neither company has confirmed those figures.
What Beating SpaceX Actually Takes
SpaceX set the record in June. It raised $75 billion at roughly $1.8 trillion. The stock then closed 19% higher on day one, one of the biggest IPO returns ever.
Anthropic has to clear both marks. Its $100 billion target beats the raise, and $2 trillion beats the valuation. The record falls if the deal prices as reported.
That pricing is the hard part. An anchor investor agrees to buy a large block of shares before a listing opens. That early order tells other buyers the price is credible.
Nvidia’s $10 billion would cover roughly a tenth of the raise. The chipmaker committed the same amount in November 2025. It also guarantees Nvidia’s $105 billion backstop on AI data center leases.
Traders Already Price Anthropic Above SpaceX
Nineteen exchanges now list pre-IPO perpetual futures on Anthropic. These contracts let traders bet on what a private company is worth before it lists. Kraken, Coinbase and Binance all offer them.
Those contracts implied an average valuation of $1.94 trillion at the start of September, according to CoinGecko. That already sits above the $1.8 trillion SpaceX carried at pricing.
Polymarket lets users bet real money on future events. There, traders give the IPO only 67% odds of completing by October 31.
Those odds reach 85% by November 15 and 90% by year end, across $2.89 million in volume. The market expects the record to fall, just not necessarily before the midterm elections.
Anthropic filed confidentially in June and still has to publish its prospectus.
The post Nvidia Could Make Anthropic IPO Bigger than SpaceX With $10 Billion appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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