The $434 Billion Spread

U.S. banks generated roughly $434 billion in net interest income during 2025, according to research from River. That works out to approximately $1,670 per American adult, extracted through one of the oldest mechanisms in banking: take customer deposits, lend or invest those funds at higher rates, and return only a fraction of the yield.

The Federal Reserve raised rates aggressively after 2022, and banks passed those higher rates through to their lending and investment portfolios immediately. They just did not pass them through to savings accounts, because they did not have to. Most savings accounts still pay depositors less than 0.1%. With inflation running above the Fed's stated 2% target for six consecutive years, the real return on savings has been deeply negative.

The gap between what banks earn and what they pay is the $434 billion. It is not a fee. It is not a charge. It is the quiet monetization of inertia, built on the bet that most people will not bother moving their money.

Fintech's Drift From Its Mission

The fintech sector once positioned itself as the corrective force. After the 2008 financial crisis, companies like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Cash App lowered barriers to entry, onboarding millions of new users into investing, payments, and digital assets. For the first time, financial tools once reserved for the wealthy became widely accessible.

But River CEO Alex Leishman argues that mission has drifted. What began as democratization has turned into monetization of user behavior. Investment platforms now promote memecoins, leveraged derivatives, and sports betting-style features. Push notifications, streaks, instant settlement, and social features all reinforce short-term behavior.

Data consistently shows that most retail participants lose money in high-frequency trading environments. Futures markets see the vast majority of traders underperform. In jurisdictions where sports betting has expanded, personal bankruptcy rates have climbed in the years that follow. The interface may look like a brokerage account, but the incentives increasingly resemble a casino.

Leishman's critique is not that risk-taking should be eliminated, but that it should be transparent. Casinos do not present themselves as wealth-building tools. Increasingly, financial apps do.

Bitcoin Ownership Still Early

Despite more than a decade of growth, less than one-fifth of American adults currently own bitcoin. That number simultaneously highlights how early adoption remains and how wide the gap between existing financial systems and viable alternatives continues to be.

Bitcoin does not promise yield. It does not rely on user engagement to sustain itself. Its value proposition is narrower but more rigid: a fixed supply, a decentralized network, and the ability to self-custody without reliance on intermediaries. None of these properties depend on a bank choosing to share its profits with you.

Why It Matters

This is not banks suppressing rates to steal from depositors in some grand conspiracy. It is something more mundane and more structural: banks benefiting from a high-rate environment while exploiting the simple fact that most people will not bother moving their money. The Fed handed banks a gift after 2022, and banks kept it.

Bitcoin exists outside this framework entirely. There is no spread to extract because there is no intermediary sitting between you and your purchasing power. No one earns $1,670 per person per year from your inaction. The $434 billion is not a scandal. It is the cost of trusting a system whose incentives are not aligned with yours, and a reminder that the alternative, while still early, does not charge you for the privilege of being ignored.