Enrique Abeyta:

Failed Companies Are Selling Old Slack Chats and Email Archives To Train AI

Startups that are shutting down are now selling off their company data, including emails and Slack messages, for as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars to help train AI models.

Forbes reports that companies that specialize in winding down startups are helping founders squeeze out some last-minute cash by monetizing their internal communications.

While large language models were initially trained on public internet data like books, news articles, Wikipedia, and Reddit threads, newer agentic AI models require more complex datasets that reflect how work actually gets done.

That training often happens in so-called "reinforcement learning gyms" or RL gyms. These simulated environments are built using real-world company data and allow AI agents to practice completing workplace tasks like planning a birthday celebration for a coworker. This kind of training data has quickly become very lucrative. The Information reported last year that leaders at Anthropic discussed spending up to $1 billion on RL gyms.

Still, some privacy advocates are raising concerns about what this means for workers whose data may be included in those datasets.

"I think the privacy issues here are quite substantial," Center for AI and Digital Policy Founder Marc Rotenberg told the outlet. "It's not generic data. It's identifiable people."

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Greg Guenthner:

Bitcoin Rises, Oil Falls After Iran Says Strait of Hormuz Is Open

Iran's foreign minister said Friday that the Strait of Hormuz is open to commercial vessel traffic for the remainder of the current ceasefire, prompting quick market reactions.

"In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire," said Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi in a Friday X post.

U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed the opening of the passage in a Friday post on Truth Social.

Bitcoin (BTC) briefly hit $77,037 on Friday following the news, rising around 1%, following a 5% weekly recovery, according to TradingView data.

Brent crude oil futures sank to around $85 per barrel, falling 10% on the news, according to Tradingeconomics data.

Easing geopolitical tensions may bring more risk appetite among crypto investors. However, the two-week ceasefire between the U.S., Israel and Iran is set to expire on April 22, with the threat of renewed escalation continuing to weigh on market sentiment.

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James Altucher:

Dogecoin Gold? A DOGE-Themed Company Is Joining the Tokenized Gold Rush

Dogecoin Cash Inc. announced Thursday it is developing Dogecoin Gold, a planned token that would link digital assets to physical gold reserves while borrowing the name of the most valuable and longest-running meme coin on the market.

The framework proposes tokens representing precisely defined units of gold held by an independent, institutional-grade precious metals custodian. Under the proposed system, tokens would be created only when gold enters custody and removed from circulation upon verified redemption.

While full technical documentation is still forthcoming, the firm said it plans to tokenize gold with nanogram-level precision that would allow one billion tokens to represent one gram of physical gold.

Tokenized gold isn't a new concept, though the biggest firms doing it today – Tether with its $2.7 billion XAUT token, and Paxos with its nearly $2.4 billion PAX Gold (PAXG) – measure their tokens in ounces pegged to the price of real gold. Such tokens have surged in value and demand in recent months as gold rose to new all-time highs.

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