In other words, it’s increasingly obvious that who your parents are has become a more reliable predictor of your wealth than what you actually do for a living.

According to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, there’s a growing rift between income and wealth generation. For decades, the American Dream was predicated on the fact that hard work and a decent income would lead to homeownership. But the research finds that high earnings no longer correlate directly with wealth generation. Rather, it matters more so today what assets your family owns.

“Those that come from wealthier families that are maybe able to achieve those other economic goals—wealth building, homeownership—I think also could play into a sentiment of a sort of unfairness in the economy,” Max Risch, one of the study’s co-authors and an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told Fortune. 

Even as Wall Street hits successive record highs, Americans are feeling worse and worse about the economy. An April Ipsos poll found that 61% of Americans today feel the economy is on the wrong track. Meanwhile, the May consumer sentiment index hit the lowest level since the University of Michigan started tracking the metric in 1952, lower than during the COVID pandemic and aftermath of the Great Recession. And that may be because even when workers secure steady if not high-paying jobs, they’re increasingly locked out of securing assets to generate wealth.

The resilient value of the ‘Bank of Mom and Dad’

The researchers leveraged a dataset of 3.4 million families and their wealth and income records across multiple generations to track how money moves geographically and cross-generationally. One of the most surprising findings, Risch said, was that earnings were only able to explain about half of the intergenerational inequality in housing. 

The data shows that even with identical incomes, a child of wealthier parents is substantially more likely to own a home than one without wealthy parents. Of course, there are other ways Americans amass wealth outside of homeownership. But Risch notes that for the bottom 95% of earners, nearly all wealth is tied to housing and pensions.

“It’s very consistent with the parents being able to help overcome these financial barriers,” Risch said, “maybe through direct asset transfers, co-signing a loan, putting a down payment.”

This tracks with the findings of a recent Northwestern Mutual report. More parents today are stepping in, or thinking about helping their kids secure keys to a home. The study also found that some parents are even prioritizing saving for a down payment than for a college degree.   

Homeownership becomes a fading dream

Higher incomes simply aren’t able to make the cut. A recent report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that home prices have surged to five times the median income nationally, nearing historic highs. In some metros, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, home prices are more than 10 times the median income.

Risch looks west to illustrate why, even with a steady income today, it’s harder to climb up the wealth generation ladder. The study found California has some of the highest upward mobility in terms of income, meaning there’s ample opportunity for workers to move up a tax bracket or two thanks to the jobs offered in the state. But it turns out moving west to strike gold has its limitations. The state is one of the worst parts of the country for upward mobility of homeownership. Even with a high-paying job, most are locked out of homeownership in the Golden State, except those with wealthy parents. Americans in other metro hubs face the same barriers in turning a paycheck into property, from New York to Chicago to Houston.

Those stark geographical differences are something Risch said parents may consider when thinking about their kids’ future well-being.

“There are these sort of tradeoffs that families have to make either when they’re thinking about where to live, when they’re thinking about how to set up their children for economic success,” he said. 

Mining costs in parts of the US have climbed past $100,000 for a single bitcoin, pushing operators to pack up and move. Paraguay and Ethiopia have emerged as top destinations, both offering surplus hydroelectric power that keeps electricity bills low.

According to crypto exchange KuCoin, the shift is already underway, with hash rate actively migrating toward what analysts are calling the “Global South.”

That geographic spread, KuCoin argues, actually strengthens the Bitcoin network by reducing its exposure to any one country’s political or energy shocks.

It is a different kind of decentralization — not the kind Satoshi Nakamoto imagined, but decentralization just the same.

The Opposite Paths Of Two Technologies

While Bitcoin mining grows more concentrated in terms of hardware and industrial scale, artificial intelligence may be moving the other way.

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy, made that case on Sunday, pointing out that AI started its life in massive, corporate-controlled data centers.

bitcoin mining began decentralized (CPUs, GPUs) and became centralized (ASICs, industrial-scale farms)

AI may follow the opposite path: it started centralized in giant hosted clusters, but as frontier model gains slow (from data scarcity, context limits, and memory bottlenecks)… pic.twitter.com/J2indQsTt8

— Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) April 12, 2026

Now, as frontier models run into constraints — data scarcity, memory limits, context bottlenecks — open-source alternatives are gaining ground. Smaller models are getting cheaper and more capable. Some already run directly on phones and laptops.

“If local models keep getting smaller, cheaper, and more efficient, AI may become increasingly personal and on-device,” Thorn said.

Bitcoin mining started the opposite way. Ordinary people once mined coins from home computers. That era is long gone.

Today, mining requires either specialized ASIC hardware or access to an industrial-scale facility. The gap between a casual participant and a serious miner has never been wider.

A $119 Billion Market Taking Shape

The push toward on-device AI processing has a name: edge computing. It refers to running AI models locally — on the device itself — rather than routing data to a remote server.

Data shows the global edge AI market was valued at roughly $25 billion in 2025. Based on projections from Grand View Research, that figure is expected to reach close to $120 billion by 2033, a jump of nearly 300% over eight years.

The growth is being driven by the spread of connected devices, demand for real-time processing, and growing concern over data privacy. Industries that cannot afford delays — manufacturing, healthcare, logistics — are among those pushing adoption forward.

For Bitcoin, the concern runs in the other direction. Increasing concentration of mining power raises questions about long-term network security.

A network where just a handful of large players control most of the hash rate is more vulnerable to disruption than one spread across thousands of independent operators.

Geographically, the migration away from the US may ease some of that pressure. Whether it is enough remains an open question.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView

A new working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found after sports betting was legalized in the U.S., delinquencies among the total population increased 0.3%. While that figure may appear small, when the Fed researchers analyzed the population of just those who participated in sports betting, delinquency rates rose by 10%. 

The New York Fed used an analysis of consumer credit data and defined delinquency rates as being 90 days past due on any credit purchase, such as auto loans or mortgage payments.

“Our findings suggest that sports betting can have dramatic implications for household financial stability,” the authors wrote.

In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act effective banning sports betting, opening the door for 40 states to legalize the practice in some form. Since then, participation in sports betting, particularly online, has exploded. Commercial gaming revenue hit a record $78.7 Billion in 2025, according to the American Gaming Association, a 9.2% year-over-year increase. Americans have wagered more than $520 billion on sports since the practice was legalized, and quarterly deposits have risen to $1,250 in 2025, compared to $500 five years ago, the Fed researchers found.

Millennials and Gen Z are particularly vulnerable to negative financial consequences as a result of sports betting. While 22% of Americans have an account with at least one online sportsbook, according to a 2025 Siena College Research Institute Survey, nearly half of men ages 18 to 49 have an account. People under 40 made up the largest share of individuals with credit delinquency, which rose to 26% after legalization, the Fed study found using “back-of-the-napkin” math.

The widespread financial consequences of sports betting

The New York Fed report adds to a growing base of literature showing the financial harms associated with sports betting. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 found household bests increased $1,100 per year in states with legal online sports betting, which was also associated with a 14% decrease in net investments, such as stocks.

A 2025 study analyzing University of California Consumer Credit Panel found average credit scores in states with legal online sports betting were slashed by about 2.7 points and increased the likelihood of bankruptcy by 10%.

“The various outcomes of delinquencies and credit scores [are] just kind of indicating that it seems to be leading to some harm among consumers,” Poet Larson, the study co-author and postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Data Design Institute at the Harvard Business School, told Fortune.

Larson speculates that sports betting has become so popular. Young people, to whom online sportsbooks are marketed toward and who have less accumulated weather than older generations, could be particularly at risk, he said.

These financial effects extend beyond states where sports betting is legal. The Fed study found significant spatial spillover effects, meaning delinquency rose in states where sports betting was illegal, but which bordered legal states. Spillover delinquency rose 0.2% compared to the 0.3% baseline, a result of individuals crossing borders in order to use online sports betting platforms in states where it is legal.

The future of legal sports betting

States that have not yet legalized sports betting may still see similar trends in financial insecurity for reasons beyond spillover effects. The rise in popularity of prediction markets, such as Kalshi—which are legal and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as “designated contract markets”—have effectively created a national sports betting market.

A  Citizens JMP report published this month found that in users’ first three months on a prediction market platform, they lost more money proportionate to the amount wagered than on online sportsbooks like DraftKings or FanDuel.

Still, prediction markets are relatively untapped in the U.S., with just 3% of Americans and 8% of men ages 18 to 24 reporting using a platform in the past six months, according to a Ipsos survey of more than 2,3000 adults published this month. Larson suggested the impact of these emerging platforms on financial security with depend on how popular they become.

“Because you have so many people sports gambling, you can start to see appreciable financial harms,” Larson said. “For prediction markets…if it’s small, then we might see financial harm, but it may be kind of difficult to detect.”

Almost nine out of 10 underwater internet cable failures over the past decade caused little to no disruption to the Bitcoin network, according to new academic research.

Random Failures Vs. Targeted Cuts

The study, published in February by researchers Wenbin Wu and Alexander Neumueller of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, tracked 68 confirmed cable fault events between 2014 and 2025.

Data shows 87% of those incidents knocked fewer than 5% of Bitcoin nodes offline. Price impact was essentially nonexistent — the correlation coefficient between cable failures and Bitcoin’s market value came in at -0.02, a figure researchers describe as statistically insignificant.

The study is the first of its kind to look at Bitcoin’s exposure to physical internet infrastructure over a long stretch of time.

Source: Wenbin Wu, Alexander Neumueller

Using a country-level cascade model built on peer-to-peer network data, the researchers set out to answer a question that has circled the crypto community for years: what would actually happen to Bitcoin if the internet took a serious hit?

Their answer, at least for random failures, is: not much. Between 72% and 92% of all submarine cables connecting countries worldwide would have to fail before more than 10% of Bitcoin nodes go dark.

Subsea cables carry roughly 99% of international internet traffic. Getting to that failure threshold would require a catastrophic, near-total collapse of global internet infrastructure.But the picture changes sharply when the failure is deliberate.

Image shows map of the world's undersea cable network. Source: SubmarineCableMap

Chokepoints Present A Different Problem

Targeted attacks on specific cable chokepoints could achieve serious disruption with far fewer cuts. Officials said researchers found the critical failure threshold drops to between 5% and 20% when attacks are aimed at high-traffic junction points — a threat the paper describes as roughly an order of magnitude more potent than random failures.

That gap between random and targeted risk is the sharpest finding in the report. It suggests Bitcoin’s exposure to physical infrastructure is not evenly distributed.

Some cables matter far more than others, and a well-coordinated strike on the right connections could do damage that years of accidental outages have not.

Geographic diversity in Bitcoin mining, which expanded significantly after China’s 2021 crackdown pushed operations to other countries, has done little to change this picture.

Reports indicate that infrastructure strength tracks physical cable routes, not where miners happen to be located.

Tor Adds A Layer Of Complexity

One factor working in Bitcoin’s favor is the widespread use of Tor, the privacy-focused routing system that bounces traffic through a chain of servers to mask a user’s location.

Based on reports, 64% of all Bitcoin nodes are effectively invisible to outside observers because of Tor adoption — a detail that complicates any effort to map and target the network.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView

For job-stayers, their pay growth held steady at 4.5%, where it has sat for the best part of the past year.

The gap between job-stayers and job-hoppers (analysed by tracking high-frequency payroll reporting for the same cohort of workers over 12-month intervals to compute each individual’s year-over-year change in gross pay, including base salary, bonuses, and tips) has been shrinking, particularly since this summer, and hasn’t been so close since November 2020. As of January, the difference in pay growth between switchers and stayers is just 1.9%.

The growth between job-stayers and those who jumped ship was highest in sectors with in-demand skills: construction, and natural resources, and mining. These sectors saw job-hopper growth of 6.6% and 5.6% compared to job-stayers, respectively.

This was followed by financial activities and manufacturing, where job hoppers got a boost of approximately 3% compared to those who stayed in their roles (who also saw a YoY raise, irrespective).

In service roles, gains were fractional, up only 0.6% to move; and in education and healthcare, as well as trade, transportation, and utilities, gains were marginal: Just a 1.6% increase to move.

In some roles, it actually pays to stick with the same employer. In leisure and hospitality and IT, workers who stayed in their roles actually saw their salaries fare better than those who left. The difference in wage growth between hoppers and stayers was -2.5% and -0.6% respectively, in these categories.

ADP’s data, overall, plays to the labor market narrative economists had seen in the data right up until the latest jobs report. Despite January’s jobs report coming in ahead of expectations, adding 130,000 roles, many economists still believe slow-hire, slow-fire is the base case.

RSM Chief Economist Joe Brusuelas wrote last week: “There are several reasons why hiring has slowed: Changing demographics, tight immigration policies, the end of labor hoarding and a pause in hiring as productivity improves. In the near term, there is no reason that these factors will change. But it is growing equally clear that gross domestic product is in the process of decoupling from hiring.

“While GDP provides strong insight into production, construction and investment, it does not always tell us how we live now. Slower job growth makes it more difficult to find a similar job at higher wages and adds to the very real affordability crisis that many households face.”

Working less

The ADP report, penned by the organisation’s chief economist Dr Nela Richardson, also suggests people are working less than they used to. Richardson writes: “On average, employees are working an hour less each week than they did before the pandemic. Although January showed a modest year-over-year increase in hours worked, levels remained near a seven-year low.” The average working week, per the ADP data, is now 33.6 hours a week compared to 34.7 hours in January 2023.

Some of this may be due to the fact that more people are now working part-time, with a greater proportion of U.S. workers working less than the full working week of 35 hours. “In 2025 and 2026, the share of people working part-time was about 45%, 6 percentage points more than in 2019,” Richardson noted.

One factor potentially contributing to this shift is the age of the U.S. population: The median age of workers has steadily increased from 40.5 in 2004 to 41.7 in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While this is still comfortably ahead of the retirement age, it exemplifies the broader shift the labor force will experience in the coming years.

Research from the Population Reference Bureau found the number of Americans aged 65 and older is projected to increase from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050 (a 42% increase), and the 65-and-older age group’s share of the total population is projected to rise from 17% to 23%. This has knock-on impacts on retirement, or those who want to work less but still earn, with studies from the likes of Pew Research showing boomers are participating in the workforce at levels not seen for generations.

A new analysis of dozens of peer-reviewed medical studies found no link between the use of Tylenol during pregnancy and diagnoses of autism, ADHD or intellectual disabilities in children.

A new study found potential health concerns with the drinking water on some airlines where you might order coffee or tea. The review was of airplane drinking water stored in onboard tanks, not bottled products. Of the 10 major airlines, Delta scored best, while JetBlue and American were the bottom two carriers.