Sam Bankman-Fried is headed to his parents’ home in Silicon Valley after being released on $250 million bail yesterday. The former FTX CEO will be under house arrest while he awaits trial for fraud—including allegations that he moved customer funds from the crypto exchange into his other company, a crypto hedge fund called Alameda Research.

But he wasn’t alone. Caroline Ellison, the 28-year-old former CEO of Alameda, pleaded guilty for her role in the massive grift this week, attempting to minimize her punishment in exchange for her full cooperation with SBF’s prosecutors. She admitted she knew customer funds from FTX were being invested into Alameda to prop up its books. And the estimated amount is egregious: FTX owes creditors $8 billion and has lent as much as $10 billion to Alameda, per the NYT.

Ellison is quite the character

Since the implosion of FTX, Ellison has fascinated internet sleuths due to her academic background, quirky personality traits, and the tome of Tumblr blogs she’s apparently written.

Before Ellison had a rap sheet, her fun facts included being:

• The daughter of MIT economists
• A Potterhead and self-proclaimed Ravenclaw
• Captain of her high school’s math team and a math major at Stanford

So, how did she link up with SBF? They worked together at the finance firm Jane Street, where they bonded over “effective altruism,” a trendy Silicon Valley philosophy about accumulating wealth in order to give back and help humanity (now seen as a front by some). SBF left to start Alameda Research and later asked Ellison to join him at the then-startup.

Ellison kept a low profile as she ascended to CEO, but she did give enough interviews to hint at her Thanksgiving-level appetite for risk. “Being comfortable with risk is very important,” she said, and separately, “Young people tend to be too risk averse.”

At times, Ellison and SBF were romantically involved, and that’s not all they shared: SBF has tweeted about stimulant use at Alameda and FTX, and Ellison tweeted in 2021, “Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated human experience is.”

Looking ahead…Ellison’s guilty plea—along with a similar one from Gary Wang, FTX’s former CTO and co-founder—further isolates SBF from his crypto Bling Ring as he faces up to 115 years in prison, if convicted of all eight charges.—JW

Not even a Hallmark movie could get you home now. Airlines canceled more than 5,000 flights Wednesday–Friday due to the massive winter storm barreling through the US during what’s (normally) the busiest travel time of the year, according to FlightAware. The storm, which has already sent temps below 0 degrees Fahrenheit in 18 states, is causing dramatic drops in temperature across the country: Montana hit –50 degrees yesterday and New York City is expected to go from 53 degrees to just 14 in a few hours this afternoon.

ByteDance employees were snooping on journalists. TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance said yesterday that some of its employees improperly accessed the data of TikTok users. And these weren’t just any TikTok users—they were American journalists who were suspected of obtaining leaks about the company. This is a really bad look for ByteDance, especially as concern grows in Washington around TikTok’s privacy guardrails. ByteDance’s CEO admitted as much, saying that its “public trust” had been “significantly undermined.”

Predictions for China’s Covid wave are dire. The country is probably experiencing 1 million coronavirus infections a day and 5,000 Covid deaths, according to British research firm Airfinity. The wave is so severe because much of China’s not-at-all immune population is being exposed to the virus for the first time after Beijing recently pivoted away from its stringent “zero Covid” policies. Getting accurate Covid numbers will continue to be difficult in China because it scrapped most tracking of new infections and deaths caused by the virus.

The lengthy bidding war for NFL Sunday Ticket is over, and it’s going to the house that Grape Lady built. YouTube secured a seven-year, $2 billion-per-season contract for the franchise rights—the latest streamer to be embraced by pro sports (Amazon began exclusively streaming Thursday Night Football this year).

Starting in the 2023 season, YouTube will host Sunday Ticket in two ways: 1) as an add-on to YouTube TV or 2) as a YouTube Primetime Channel (which won’t require a YouTube TV subscription). Pricing hasn’t been announced yet. Sunday Ticket has aired on DirecTV since 1994.

Other tech companies, including Amazon and Apple, had also been in negotiations for Sunday Ticket. Apple CEO Tim Cook even met with league officials and influential team owners like Jerry Jones and the Kraft family to win support. But after losing out to YouTube, Apple will just have to be satisfied with sponsoring the Super Bowl Halftime show.

Zoom out: YouTube’s long-term bet on its streaming service is a sign that streamers see live sports as a key part of their future—which makes sense, since sports accounted for 95 of the top 100 most viewed TV programs in 2021. But according to recent Morning Consult surveys, the younger generation’s fandom may be decreasing: 33% of Gen Zers don’t watch any sports (and 73% of those said it’s because they aren’t interested).—MK

The Senate has passed and the House will vote today on a 4,000+ page, $1.7 trillion spending bill to avoid a government shutdown and fund government agencies through September 2023. We’re going to skip most of the boring stuff that’s in the bill (probably price limits on congressional white elephant gifts, etc.) to focus on some big updates to your retirement savings.

Chief Government Affairs Officer for the American Retirement Association Will Hansen told the Washington Post that this is the biggest bill concerning retirement in 15+ years. So what’s in it?

• For starters, most businesses will be required to automatically enroll employees in 401(k) plans beginning in 2025.
• The required age people have to start taking money out of their retirement account will be bumped up from 72 to 73 in 2023, and then to 75 in 2033.
• Plus, older employees can now put more money into their 401(k) plans beyond regular contribution limits.

The bill also makes it easier for employers to establish emergency accounts for workers and limits penalties for employees who need to withdraw funds for emergencies from those accounts.

To some, the makeover is giving more drugstore, less Sephora. Critics say the updates will disproportionately help wealthy people who don’t feel pressured to withdraw money from retirement accounts. Plus, increasing contribution limits and opening more accounts = more fees collected by the financial industry, which heavily lobbied for these changes.

Beyond retirement accounts…here’s what else made it into the spending bill (and what didn’t).—MM

Stat: The carcass of FTX is yielding a rich bounty. Partners at Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm working on FTX’s bankruptcy, will bill more than $2,100 per hour for some of their work on the case, per court filings. SBF was already skeptical of Sullivan & Cromwell, who represented FTX pre-bankruptcy. In prepared remarks for Congress (that he didn’t deliver), SBF wrote that the law firm used “mentally unbalanced” tactics to pressure him to file for Chapter 11. But they won’t be the only ones making bank: John Ray III, FTX’s new CEO, is making $1,300 an hour.

Quote: “The appropriate internal action will be taken.”

If you’re wondering why Salt Bae, of all people, was celebrating on the field after the World Cup final, so is FIFA. The soccer organization is investigating how the internet-famous chef and other individuals gained “undue access” to the pitch following the game. Salt Bae may have failed to get Lionel Messi’s attention during the post-game celebrations, but he did manage to snap a (now-deleted) photo with Elon Musk.

Read: An interview with the translator of Sally Rooney’s novels into Chinese. (Chaoyang Trap)

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to closing your work laptop for the last time before vacation.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

When critics get critical: The most scathing book reviews of the year.

Best of the internet: When they just couldn’t figure out a) how to design phones and b) which emoji scissors can close.

More lists! The 25 best TV episodes of 2022, the 12 hottest food trends of the year, and the video games that defined 2022.

Celebrate your workers: Make sure your employees feel appreciated this time of year without breaking the bank. For some inspiration, check out HR Brew’s guide to corporate gifts under $50.

Jigsaw: These baby owls are hangry.

Friday puzzle

Find a three-letter word that has one syllable—but when you add one letter to the end, the word becomes three syllables.

Bank account running low at the end of the year? Learn how to budget effectively all year long using Money with Katie’s 2023 Wealth Planner. Shop here.

Healthcare Brew keeps doctors, nurses, administrators, and everyone in between updated on the world of pharma, health tech, and more. Subscribe now.

Getting into personal finance can be intimidating. That’s why we made it easy with Money Scoop—the free newsletter that makes you smarter about your money.