CoinMarketCap News, Jan 18: FTX's Tainted Money Causes Big Headaches in Congress

The total amount of assets recovered by FTX's new management has risen to $5.5 billion — a far cry from the $1 billion reported a month ago. However, executives are warning there's still a "substantial shortfall" in assets — meaning there are no guarantees that customers will be made whole. A "Herculean investigative effort" has also helped John Ray identify $4.6 billion in illiquid investments that were made by Sam Bankman-Fried and his inner circle. But there are fears that their value could end up being far less than what FTX paid. As work continues to untangle the financial mess that SBF left behind, efforts are also underway to claw back payments that were made to third parties before the collapse.

SBF may have just given even more ammo to prosecutors ahead of his criminal trial in October. In a new Substack, the embattled 30-year-old has accused FTX's law firm of making "extremely misleading" statements about the health of the exchange's U.S. arm. He once again argued that FTX US is fully solvent, meaning its customers could be made whole immediately. Bankman-Fried insists that this business had "at least $111 million, and likely around $400 million, of excess cash on top of what was required to match customer balances." It's become painfully clear that his successor as CEO doesn't see things that way. SBF's numbers-heavy post didn't touch on the topic of shortfalls at international-facing FTX.com.

A CoinDesk report suggests that a staggering 196 members of Congress received political donations from FTX executives. Given how 535 sit in the Senate and the House of Representatives — that's one in three of them. Beneficiaries include new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The news outlet has asked each of them for information about what they've done with the money. Many have given the tainted cash to charity, but FTX's new management has warned that these funds will still need to be clawed back. Republicans and Democrats both benefited from these financial contributions, and there's little doubt they're causing huge headaches on Capitol Hill.

CBDCs have enjoyed a flurry of support from giants in business and banking — with the likes of IBM, Deloitte and the Bank of America declaring them as "the future of money." One Ukrainian politician has even declared that he'd like his salary to be paid in the form of a central bank digital currency. One BoA analyst warned countries that fail to embrace CBDCs "risk irrelevance over the longer term." But not everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has questioned the need for a digital pound, warning U.K. politicians: "We have to be very clear what problem we are trying to solve here before we get carried away by the technology and the idea."

Feverish excitement is growing as Apple plans to roll out a mixed-reality headset later this year. But a Bloomberg report suggests that a planned follow-up product — lightweight, augmented reality glasses — have now been abandoned because of technical issues. It was hoped the AR glasses could one day replace iPhones, with everything from notifications to map directions directly in the wearer's line of vision. Unfortunately, the battery has ended up becoming a pretty significant issue. Not only would attaching it to the glasses make the device way too heavy, and spark safety concerns, but there are doubts that they would deliver enough power to last for the whole day.