Good morning. After years of hardly any regulation of the cryptocurrency sector, the collapse of FTX has increased pressure on U.S. government agencies to step up their game.

One of them is the Securities and Exchange, which has been investigating parts of the industry for more than six years, but hasn't taken action against a major crypto exchange—though it has fined or sued dozens of token developers.

The SEC has said many cryptocurrencies qualify as securities that should be sold under rules for stocks and bonds. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has said crypto exchanges are breaking the law by not following rules that the Nasdaq Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange observe.

On Thursday, the SEC asked public companies to detail their exposure to distressed crypto entities following the collapse of trading platform FTX and its affiliates.

The SEC's move follows last week's Senate testimony by Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Rostin Behnam, who said he supported a bill that would give his small agency authority to police trading in bitcoin, ether and other digital assets classified as commodities. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is also contributing to the discussion, Risk & Compliance Journal’s Richard Vanderford reports. The OCC is advising financial institutions looking to enter the crypto space to do so with abundant caution.

The question many are asking is which agency is up to the task of regulating such a complex sector. Some lawyers say the SEC’s enforcement efforts haven’t gone far enough as crypto has gone mainstream and everyday investors are entrusting their savings to crypto companies. Mr. Gensler “is risking significant criticism if he doesn’t get things moving,” said John Reed Stark, a former SEC enforcement attorney.

“It was a gap in their strategy to not go after these entities,” Mr. Stark said.

Activision Deal Challenged. The Federal Trade Commission Thursday sued Microsoft Corp. to block its planned $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., taking one of its biggest shots under the Biden administration at halting a merger of technology giants.

Antitrust experts initially expected the deal for the “Call of Duty” publisher would clear government scrutiny. But allegations that workplace misconduct was rampant in the past at Activision created trouble for the company in Washington—including with progressive senators who called on the FTC to thoroughly investigate the deal, along with its potential impact on workers.

The FTC also asked a judge to halt Meta Platforms Inc.’s planned acquisition of a virtual-reality startup, a case that represents a shift in U.S. antitrust enforcement and poses a challenge to the Facebook parent’s metaverse strategy.

U.S. sanctions Turkish businessmen. The Biden administration levied sanctions against several Turkish businessmen and more than two dozen Turkish companies that officials said were selling oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran’s terror-listed military unit. The action is a part of a broader effort to increase pressure on Tehran as talks over Iran’s nuclear program flounder, according to analysts.

• A powerful House committee investigating the Washington Commanders’ workplace culture issued a scathing report detailing what it described as team owner Dan Snyder‘s efforts to cover up his own alleged wrongdoing and the National Football League’s complicity in preventing key facts from coming to light.
   
• Women’s basketball star Brittney Griner has been released from a Russian penal colony and is being returned to the U.S. through a prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, which culminated on Thursday with a Cold War-style handover on an airport runway in Abu Dhabi.

China Covid restrictions loosened. China’s easing of its zero-tolerance Covid-19 restrictions is likely to open the door to a wave of infections that could cause chaos and upwards of a million deaths, public health experts said, with some warning of ramifications beyond the country’s borders.

“It will put unprecedented strain on the Chinese health system,” said Xi Chen, a public health scientist at the Yale School of Public Health, adding: “It is expected that at least in the next couple of months, things will get chaotic and painful.”

A letter from the founder of Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest iPhone assembler played a major role in persuading China’s Communist Party leadership to accelerate plans to dismantle the country’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 policies, according to people familiar with the matter. 

• Amtrak is asking federal regulators to investigate Union Pacific Corp. over delays its freight trains have inflicted on the Sunset Limited, a long-distance passenger route from New Orleans to Los Angeles that is its worst-performing route in the country.
   
• Ukraine’s foreign minister called on the country’s allies not to fear a possible breakup of the Russian state as a consequence of the war, while defending Kyiv’s right to strike targets on Russian soil and vowing that Ukraine would never accept a peace settlement that leaves occupied lands, including Crimea, under Moscow’s control.
   
• U.S. unemployment filings rose slightly last week, a sign the labor market remains tight despite layoffs at some companies and broader economic uncertainty.

Post-spinoff plans. General Electric Co.’s healthcare division plans to cut debt, bring down costs and pursue tuck-in acquisitions after its spinoff in early January, finance chief Helmut Zodl said Thursday at an investor event in New York.

The financial goals come after GE’s board of directors last month approved the planned transaction, which was first unveiled in November 2021. Industrial conglomerate GE will split into three separate public companies by 2024. The spinoff of the healthcare unit, which will cost about $200 million, will put it in more direct competition with Siemens Healthineers AG, Royal Philips NV and Fujifilm Holdings Corp., according to analysts.

Green hydrogen gets a boost. Industrial-gas manufacturer Air Products and Chemicals Inc. and power company AES Corp. are planning to build a $4 billion renewable-powered hydrogen factory in North Texas, the latest large investment in green energy since Congress passed significant tax credits for such projects.

The passage of U.S. legislation in August that offers tax incentives for clean-power projects is changing those economics and starting to make low-carbon hydrogen commercially viable, the companies said.

• Shanghai Disneyland reopened Thursday as cautious optimism spread across foreign businesses operating in China following the easing of some of Beijing’s most-draconian pandemic measures, even as hurdles remained in the country’s exit from zero-Covid.
   
• Blue Apron Holdings Inc. said it would lay off about 10% of its corporate workforce and cut spending, as the meal-kit company seeks to streamline operations.
   
• More retailers are packing up goods in stores for delivering e-commerce orders as they look to speed up shipments, streamline inventory and make more use of their bricks-and-mortar sites.
   
• Amazon.com Inc. is rolling out a TikTok-like feature in its app that will allow customers to buy products from a customized feed of photos and videos.
   
• South Korea’s truck drivers have ended a weekslong strike over wage demands that had disrupted economic activity and supply chains in one of Asia’s major export hubs.
   
• The U.K. is set to face some of the worst strikes in at least a decade, raising fears that a “winter of discontent” will hit the country as workers push for bigger pay raises amid double-digit inflation and a gloomy economic outlook.