‘I got away with working from Vegas’

First, it’s just like how a bank gives you interest on cash: The companies borrowing crypto thought the market was going to keep going up and they’d be able to keep paying. Secondly, paying out such high interest attracted a ton of new customers. That made investors willing to give those startups huge valuations — making founders rich.

People say the crypto market is a house of cards, but to me, it’s more like a champagne pyramid built on a house of cards built on sand. It’s … precarious. Now, with that, let’s get started.

— Nicholas Carlson

• The FAA is experiencing an outage, leading to flight delays and cancellations across the US. Follow this developing story here.

• FTX bankruptcy documents show the list of investors set to be wiped out, including Tom Brady and Robert Kraft. See who else is set to lose out.

• The war in Ukraine could be decided this year, and the Kremlin would likely turn to nuclear weapons in the face of defeat, per a former US Army general. Read more.

Gen Z voters may have helped Democrats thwart the so-called “Red Wave” in November, but surveys of these young voters suggest that they aren’t so sold on the party itself.

For one thing, Gen Z isn’t convinced by the whole idea of party politics. According to a survey from Pew, nearly half of young voters wished there were more political parties with viable candidates.

Furthermore, a survey from the University of Texas-Austin and polling firm CollegePulse found about half of Gen Z college students said they were feeling less positive about the Democratic Party compared to a year ago. Meanwhile, only 12% said they were feeling more positive.

And young voters who lean Democrat have less faith in the future of their party compared to their conservative counterparts.

The bottom line? Democrat Party leaders should be worried. To stay in Gen Z’s good graces, they need to meaningfully address issues that young voters care about, like climate change, civil rights, and, of course, college affordability and student loans.

Top reads

• A worker went to Vegas without telling their boss — which got awkward after a surprise Zoom call. Insider spoke to a 32-year-old nonprofit worker who ended up scrambling through a casino to find a place their boss might mistake for a home office. Here’s how it all went down.

• “I asked ChatGPT to reply to my Hinge matches.” People are using OpenAI’s artificial intelligence for just about everything, from writing markets articles to cover letters. Our reporter decided to take it a step further, by having it talk to her dating app matches. Here’s how it went.

• A woman found a family trying to get into her house — because of an Airbnb listing. On Christmas night, a Philadelphia woman was shocked to find four strangers at her home. They had booked the house on Airbnb, but she never listed it. Read the full story.

• Mikes take the House. House Republicans announced new committee chairs for Congress, and six of them will be chaired by guys named Mike or Michael. That’s double the number of committees that will be chaired by women. More on Republicans’ Mike drop.

• Google’s “moonshots” research and development arm coming back down to Earth. X Development has spent more than a decade focused on fixing mankind’s most pervasive problems. But a dozen current and former employees told Insider that X is scaling back. Go inside the secretive division.

• Is Marc Benioff right? The Salesforce CEO suggested the company’s younger remote workers were less productive than their peers — and he may be onto something. But it’s not their fault. Here’s why.

• “Those who disobey are eliminated — and it’s done publicly.” Russian prisoners sent to the front lines in Ukraine as part of the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization with ties to the Kremlin, have been publicly executed for not charging into enemy fire, captured inmates say. Find out more.

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This edition was curated by Nicholas Carlson, and edited by Hallam Bullock, Lisa Ryan, Dave Smith, Nathan Rennolds, and Joe Ciolli. Get in touch: insidertoday@insider.com.