You have to feel for bankers right now. First SVB collapses, then Credit Suisse employees are denied bonuses and now Goldman Sachs has had to cancel an order for a private jet equipped with a shower – the surest sign yet of a credit crisis.

The lowdown

• 🥶 FTX Founder SBF may have bribed Chinese officials in an effort to unfreeze crypto accounts.

• ⏲️ Apple launches its own ‘buy now, pay later’ service in some markets.

• 🗿 Alibaba to split into six separate companies and explore fundraising or listings for most.

Featured stories

Substack looks to users for funding

Newsletter platform Substack is offering a community fundraising round for writers to invest in the company.

The platform has more than 35 million active subscriptions, including two million paid subscriptions, with over 17,000 writers earning money. The top 10 publishers collectively make more than $25 million annually.

Writers/investors can make an investment of at least $100, with Substack's funding goal set at $2 million and a pre-money valuation of $585 million. In under 24 hours, it is already oversubscribed with more than $5 million of commitments.

Substack says it is serious about building the platform with writers and sees the community round as a way to further this ideal while allowing users to participate in the financial upside. A more cynical take might be that, given the significant drop in tech valuations and the tightening of funding, a community round represents an opportunity to cling to a frothy valuation at the expense of retail investors.

The content we're consuming today

• WSJ: Where Financial Risk Lies, in 12 Charts ($).

• FT on Youtube: How Congo aims to double copper production.

• WSJ on YouTube: What Sets Nintendo Apart From Sony and Microsoft?

Off-balance sheet items

• The release of Nintendo’s long-awaited game ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’ is not far away. Series producer Eiji Aonuma gives players a glimpse of the gameplay in this video.

The bottom line