Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 55 seconds.

Yesterday, some more skeletons tumbled out of the FTX closet, America got ready to talk to Russia, and 2022's 2nd largest venture round got raised.

Let’s dive in.

What's hot, what's not?

Market Commentary

• The US economy is still red-hot according to the labour market.

• They added more jobs than expected in November and demand for workers is strong despite the endless layoffs and tightening from the Fed.

• Markets didn't like this news, as central banks might have to push back easing plans.

Story Roundup

1 - FTX fiasco's layers keep on unravelling. 🧅

The FTX story has layers. Like an onion.

But unlike an onion, if you store your hard earned $$$ with them, it'll disappear.

SBF very publicly said that Alameda and FTX were unrelated.

However, it turns out that Alameda took a loss of $1 billion last year trying to keep FTX afloat. A client's leveraged trade went belly-up, and he'd take investor money to cover it up.

It's insane how this guy shifted weight from one leg to the other to keep himself standing.

The only problem? He didn't prepare for a crypto crash to come slide tackling him to the ground. 💀

2 - Joe Biden picks up the phone to Putin. 📞

America's president is "ready to speak with Putin" about the Ukraine situation.

Time really flies - it's been about 9 months since this war's started, and it's all been for nothing.

Russia has been pushed back to where their offensive began, and soldiers are getting pretty angry.

They've had to resort to civilian targets, completely cutting off Ukraine from electricity, water, and gas.

A war like this helps no one, and it's in everyone's favour to get this over with.😔

3 - Defence tech startup scoops up a neat $1.5 billion. 🔫

While all hell has broken loose on the VC scene, some companies seem to keep on trucking.

Defence tech startup Anduril has managed to raise $1.5bn. That's the second-largest venture round of the year (so far!), and it's a pretty big milestone.

Young tech companies are finding it notoriously difficult to break into the defence market, as it's dominated by older folks with big money backing them.

This fundraise is a stark U-turn to the rest of the industry, as hundreds of businesses have been forced to raise lifeline cash at a down-round, which forces them to accept lower valuations.

Boom. 💥

4 - India brings digital currency to it's people. 🚀

The Reserve Bank of India is getting started with it's CBDC pilot project.

So we're gonna be having a e-rupee trial in 4 cities - New Delhi, Bangalore, Bombay, and Bhubaneshwar.

Eight banks are currently on board, and it's all gonna be done through a digital wallet that these banks will start offering.

Transactions will be either P2P or person-to-merchant.

Plus, money sent can be sent with conditions too. For example, if the government wants to ensure that a farmer is only using subsidy cash for fertilizers, they can make sure that happens.

Looks like there's a lot of fun stuff to be done. 🚀

5 - AI gets us on tilt. Literally. 💀

AI is getting out of hand. It's insane what all can be done.

OpenAI just released their ChatGPT - a generative chatbot.

And it is stunning. AI can now - - create blog posts- program algorithms- write poetry (with emotion!)- generate images with a text prompt- do homework

An AI could be writing this newsletter. You never know. 🤷

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Hope you enjoyed this issue of the Market Munch. If you've got any feedback - good or bad (😏) you can hit reply to this email. Thanks a ton for reading!

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Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏

Aryaansh