Tuesday April 28, 2026
Your Next Update May Be Given by Someone Who Does Not Exist
Last spring, two highly-watched CEOs in tech sent avatars to do their jobs. The CEOs of Klarna $KLAR and Zoom $ZM had realistic AI avatars present their quarterly investor reports rather than appearing in person. The response was mixed, and rightly so.
The benefits are real: speed, scalability, and cost. But the drawbacks are real too. Investors want to see the actual human accountable for results, not a simulation of one. Slightly off visuals and voice sync distract more than they impress. SEC disclosure standards around AI-generated content remain unsettled. And novelty fades fast. If results disappoint, the stunt becomes the punchline. I know this territory better than most.
BitDigest readers may recall that I tried using avatars for daily updates three years ago. I even went through the tedious process of commissioning a lifelike avatar of myself, spending hours in a makeup chair and a green-screened recording studio. The results were not satisfactory, and I quickly shelved the whole experiment.
I recently started playing with a new generation of realistic avatar tools, and the results are genuinely impressive. No professional studio this time. I simply read a short five-second script into my laptop camera. That was it. I did not even have to rotate my head like Apple’s Face ID. I then recorded my voice reading a second script. For people who know me, the voice is close but not exact, and frankly I am not sure I want to share my voice this way at scale just yet. From there, I can type anything and my avatar will appear to say it.
Filming a video every morning while waking up was never going to happen. But here is the real story buried in all of this: the friction between the person and the output is almost gone. Whatever I write at 5AM, my avatar can deliver it looking like I just had eight hours of sleep and a strong cup of coffee. For a daily newsletter built around spotting things early, that is not a gimmick. That is a workflow.
The avatars are getting good enough to matter. That five-second clip on my laptop may have just changed how I publish.
Click on the image above to see my avatar deliver this post
Note: When I went to render the video, the process stopped midway through informing me I had used up my entire monthly credit allowance. This service deducts credits based on the length and quality of the video, which is not immediately obvious when you sign up. The frustrating part is that I had joined the service yesterday afternoon and burned through a full month of credits in a couple of hours. I had to purchase an additional $32 in credits just to finish this one video, bringing the cost to roughly $6 for today’s post. Daily production at that price is not realistic; we need costs come down significantly.
◾ OpenAI and $MSFT restructure AI partnership: Microsoft loses exclusive model sales rights, no longer pays revenue share (OpenAI)
◾ EU issues largest-ever crypto/CBDC sanctions against Russia in 20th sanctions round (EU Council)
◾ Gemini $GEMI launches agentic trading tools for autonomous crypto execution (Gemini)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ President Trump reverses course on prediction markets, now expressing support (CoinTelegraph)
◾ Sen Tillis (R-NC) pushes ethics language into CLARITY bill amid Trump family crypto concerns (Politico)
◾ China’s Cyberspace Administration warns ByteDance to comply with AI-generated content labeling rules (Reuters)
◾ House Minority Leader Jeffries (D-NY) says protecting consumers from data center energy costs a Democratic priority (Politico)
◾ Sen Sanders (D-MA) faces Republican backlash for hosting Chinese AI researchers at Capitol Hill AI event (Punchbowl News)
Financial Notices & Public Company Releases
◾ Financial updates:
OpenAI: Misses internal Q1’26 revenue goal https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-misses-key-revenue-user-targets-in-high-stakes-sprint-toward-ipo-94a95273
$HUYA FY’25: Revenue $929M | Oploss $23M | Netloss $16M (Sec)
Skillz $SKLZ Q4’25: Revenue $30Mc| Netloss $17.9M | aEBITDA loss $10M (Skillz)
◾ Operation updates:
Strategy $MSTR +3,273 BTC ($255M) | Total holdings 818,334 BTC ($62.8B) (Sec)
Bitmine Immersion $BMNR Total holdings 5M ETH, 200 BTC, $200M in Beast Industries, $91M in $ORBS and $940 cash (PR Newswire)
Strive $ASST +789 BTC ($61M) | Total holdings 14,557 BTC ($1.1B) (X)
Block $XYZ Total holdings 8,997 BTC ($690M) | Customer holdings 199,357 BTC ($1.1B) (Block)
Hyperscale Data $GPUS +10,000 ounces of .999 fine silver bullion (PR Newswire)
◾ Core Scientific $CORZ plans 1.5 GW power expansion at Pecos, TX campus (Core Scientific)
◾ London-based Seraphim Space seeks to raise £350M to expand portfolio (SpaceNews)
◾ Solana Co $HSDT launches $8M registered direct common stock offering (GlobeNewswire)
◾ K Wave Media $KWM in strategic discussions to establish JV for real-world assets and security token offerings (GlobeNewswire)
◾ Hut 8 $HUT prices $3.25B investment-grade Senior Secured Notes offering (Hut 8)
◾ $RIOT amends credit agreement (SEC)
Restructuring, Hacks, Losses & Legal Updates
◾ Jury selected for Musk-Altman trial (The Information)
◾ DOJ backs Musk’s xAI in challenge to Colorado AI discrimination law (Bloomberg)
Crypto Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ Ripple tests blockchain remittances with South Korea’s K Bank (Korea Herald)
◾ Bitbank introduces bitcoin credit card (Bitbank)
◾ Compass Mining secures reduced 1% pool fees through SpiderPool partnership (PR Newswire)
AI Models, Applications & Developments
◾ $GOOGL signs classified AI deal with Pentagon amid internal employee opposition (The Information)
◾ 600 $GOOGL employees petition CEO Pichai to reject Pentagon classified AI contract (The Information)
◾ Taylor Swift files to trademark voice and likeness to block AI deepfakes (US News)
Space Systems, Satellites & Cosmic Activity
◾ SpaceX delays Falcon Heavy launch due to weather, targeting Wednesday morning (SpaceX)
◾ FAA proposes new fees for commercial space launch and reentry licensing (Federal Register)
◾ HawkEye 360 targets $2.4B valuation in upcoming US IPO (Reuters)
◾ ESA delays China’s Smile mission launch to May 19 (ESA)