According to external sources, from Pepsi’s latest financial report to US inflation data, to South Korea’s super-long-term national debt return, several seemingly scattered signals are pointing to the same thing: high inflation and high interest rates are still on the rise, the financial pressure on risk assets is increasing, and the encryption market is difficult to separate itself from this context.

Pepsi sales are weak.

According to the article, the Pepsi net profit in the second quarter was $24.2 billion, an increase of 6.4 per cent over the same period. However, growth has come mainly from international markets, with North American food sales declining by 2 per cent each year. The company also reduced the price of core brands such as Lay's and Doritos by up to 15 per cent to cope with weaker consumer spending.

This is seen as a more direct consumption signal. Faced with rising food and energy costs, households in the United States began to shift to smaller packagings and cheaper alternatives. It is argued that such reductions, once they occur, are often not quickly reversed.

Oil prices and inflation raise interest rate expectations

In the United States in May 2026, the CPI rose to 4.2 per cent in the same year, the highest since April 2023. According to the article, the situation in Iran has pushed up oil prices, one of the most important contexts in which inflationary pressures have risen again in the recent past. At one time Brent crude oil rose by more than 5 per cent to about US$ 77.86 per barrel, followed by higher gasoline prices.

Against this background, the market's expectations of interest rates falling during the year have further cooled. According to the article, if inflation continues to be higher than 4 per cent, maintaining high interest rates over a longer period of time will continue to reduce market liquidity, which is usually pre-empted by more volatile assets.

South Korea's long-term debt return has risen to a high level.

The article also mentioned that the Korean Ministry of Enterprise Finance auctioned 80 billion won 50-year-old national debt on 10 July, with a return of 4.34 per cent, close to the 4.39 per cent reached on 8 July and an increase of 1.68 percentage points over a year ago.

According to the article, this change does not reflect only local Korean debt markets. Korea has long been one of the dynamic markets for encrypted transactions around the world, and when the return on ultra-long-term sovereign bonds rises to a near 4.3 per cent, so will the return on some of the funds for high-risk assets.

  • USA May CPI ratio 4.2%
  • Korea 50 annual national debt return 4.345 per cent
  • The sales of Pepsi North American food have dropped by 2% each year.

The encryption market is facing a financial threshold.

According to the article, the historical performance of Bitcoin is not stable at the stage of “inflation and interest rates”. Compared to “inflation-resistant assets”, it is, in many cases, closer to highly volatile technological assets and more sensitive to changes in liquidity.

When consumer firms begin to keep up sales through lower prices, energy prices push up inflation, and long-term risk-free rates of return continue, it is more likely that new market capital flows to fixed-income assets than to more volatile equities, start-ups or digital assets. The article determines whether this macro-pressure has been transmitted to the encrypted market, and is then more clearly reflected in price performance and financial flows.