i've been talking to a lot of normal ppl outside of tech about personal agents & the convos have been incredibly fascinating, particularly w.r.t. to retention. most consumer products typically have one of two types of retention, one is desire driven which is just pure dopamine (like insta, tiktok, games). they often don't even need notifications because you know there is a reward for your desire always waiting. the second is dependency driven, like emails, calendars, even credit cards & banking. most ppl have to do this, it's not something they necessarily desire (unless they are a sociopath). the challenge with personal ai agents right now is that they occupy a weird third space where they aren't emotionally rewarding most of the time to become entertainment like the first category, & they're not reliable / indispensable enough to become pure infra. i.e. they fail, & there is a lot of friction. outside of pure research driven tasks, even one failure is often enough to not come back for the utility value prop. which is why i think vertical agents that focus on making your life more interesting & entertaining are worth deep exploration still. & even very focused vertically integrated utility agents that work reliably will still be in demand. tons of ppl still think in jobs to be done when reaching for anything & with general purpose agents that's just not as crisp yet on what those critical jobs are.

THE BLOCK: Mesh has partnered with Visa to let users spend cryptocurrency and stablecoin balances held in participating wallet apps at more than 175 million merchant locations worldwide. The integration will enable in-store and online payments through a Visa credential provisioned behind the scenes, with Mesh handling transaction funding and conversion without requiring users to sell or transfer assets beforehand.

Banks could slow stablecoin growth by paying savers more, BIS paper finds coindesk.com/business/2026/1…

NEW ROUNDUP We Cover: – Anthropic & AI's growth scare – CoreWeave's CDS panic – Yano's AI tiers: who gets wiped out – Why everyone's talking about Pearl – Stables replacing national currencies – Can the CFTC allow global liquidity? @JasonYanowitz @santiagoroel @HadickM TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 01:24 AI Sells Off, Crypto Holds Up 05:20 Is CoreWeave Facing A Debt Crisis? 10:14 Can Frontier Models Make Money? 16:20 Ads (Fidelity Crypto, DAS London) 17:30 Which AI Businesses Survive? 21:52 Who Wins As AI Gets Cheaper? 27:15 Ads (Fidelity Crypto, DAS London) 28:41 What Stood Out At Token2049? 31:49 Can AI Mining Challenge Bitcoin? 36:09 Does Pearl’s Mining Model Work? 40:23 What’s Next For Crypto Exchanges? 50:26 Will Stablecoins Replace National Currencies? 59:45 Content Of The Week

🎙️A new season. A new duo. Money Code Season 2 welcomes @HadickM and @Nick_van_Eck as your new hosts. Rob is a General Partner at @dragonfly, investing across stablecoins, payments and financial infrastructure. He previously helped build GoldenTree’s digital asset strategy, with earlier roles at Goldman Sachs and PJT Partners. Nick is the CEO and Co-founder of @withAUSD, a modern money and banking platform. A former Partner at General Catalyst, he’s gone from backing software and blockchain companies to building one. On Money Code, they’ll speak with founders, operators, allocators and policymakers about stablecoins, tokenized assets and AI. What’s ready for adoption? Where are the investment opportunities? What still needs to be built? Insights to help you make better build, buy, partner and investment decisions. What would you ask an investor and a stablecoin founder? Episode 1 is coming soon. Subscribe to Money Code wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by @thestablecon.

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New Reuters poll is brutal for prediction markets: 75/8 say prediction sites are gambling 60/13 oppose election markets 43/29 oppose sports markets 65/8 oppose US military markets 63/9 oppose markets on US gov. policy decisions Broad opposition across party lines

I pulled the Character bankruptcy docs. They show: - They were spending $14 million/month on compute alone at a time their revenue was around ~$1 million/month - Currently losing $9 million a month - They admitted they enshittified & that it didnt work 404media.co/character-ais-ba…