Founder sells shut-down crypto startup's codebase for about $25,000

What was sold

Keelan Miskell began winding down his crypto startup in 2026. He told MIT Technology Review he did not think the company's data was worth much, because its users were anonymous and the company was only a few years old.¹ He received roughly $25,000 for the code base. A separate sale of workspace data from Google, Notion, Figma and Slack was still pending when the article ran on October 13, 2026, and he expected it to bring around $15,000.¹ The buyers were not named.

Miskell's comment on the outcome was: "At least all that stuff we were doing for two and a half years is worth something to someone somewhere."¹

How the deal came together

SimpleClosure brokered the sale. The company, which helps founders close their businesses, added data sales to its services in April 2026. Its Asset Hub platform lets founders sell code and workspace data such as emails, chats and documents.¹ MIT Technology Review reports that buyers on the platform include foundation AI labs, vendors that build simulated workspaces for AI training, and mature tech companies.¹

The timing of the sale matters. SimpleClosure's own shutdown report says assets are worth the most while a company is still operating and that most of the value is lost once the entity closes.² It lists code repositories, internal tools, AI models and data, domain names and hardware as assets that can be sold through the hub.²

How a buyer arrives at a price varies. MIT Technology Review reports that Sunset, another wind-down firm, values a client's assets by headcount, years in operation, data volume and how the team used its tools.¹ Buyer valuations rest on "research theses" estimating how many useful tasks a given volume of data can support, such as 100,000 lines of code.¹ Nick Heiner, who leads this work at Surge AI, said one company's Slack history can be worth more than another company's Slack, email and calendars combined.¹

What went wrong or drew pushback

Nothing went wrong in Miskell's case as reported, but his sale falls under the same questions raised about the wider market. The first is privacy. Greg Ewing, an attorney who advises AI startups, called this kind of data "legally radioactive" and described a "Wild West of AI training," noting that emails and calendars hold private details such as doctor appointments and school pickups.¹ Suppliers employ data scientists to scrub personal information and exclude HR records.¹

The second is who benefits. Ifeoma Ajunwa, an Emory University law professor, calls the proceeds "captured capital" because they typically go to senior creditors and investors rather than employees. She said employers should have express consent before selling workers' data and noted there is no federal law banning such sales.¹

The third is that the second sale had not closed. A pending sale can fall through or change in price, so the $15,000 figure is an expectation, not a payment.¹

What it means for companies with data

The case is useful mainly because of how ordinary it is. A crypto company with anonymous users and about two and a half years of history, run by a small team, still found a buyer for its code and expected another for its workspace data.¹ The total, about $40,000 if the pending sale closes, is modest, but it is real money for a company that was shutting down.

For a company thinking about a sale, the lessons are practical. Treat code and workspace data as separate products. Expect the buyer to want to see what the team actually did in those tools, not just how much data exists. Decide before the sale who is responsible for removing personal information, and whether employees should be told. And do not assume the data is worthless because the company is small or young.

See /data/code/ for more on how code is valued by AI developers.