Can agentic commerce dominate the global economy?

Meta's CMO on agentic commerce and stablecoins. Strategy raises $3.2B without selling bitcoin. And Cardano just upgraded itself by vote for the first time. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Monday, July 20, 2026 Meta's CMO on agentic commerce, stablecoins, and why taste is now the only moat that matters Meta CMO and head of analytics Alex Schultz doesn't treat stablecoins as a bet — he treats them as a given. In a wide-ranging conversation with CoinDesk, Schultz laid out why Meta thinks agentic commerce could dominate the global economy, with over a million businesses already running Meta AI agents. His read on creativity in the AI era is equally direct: taste is now the only real moat, and the people who thrive will be the ones managing fleets of AI tools rather than competing with them. He invokes the radiologist argument — that every automation wave has created more jobs than it killed — to push back on AI doomerism, and draws a straight line from WhatsApp's conversational commerce in Brazil and India to where the rest of the world is heading. On what Meta missed with TikTok, why the Valley has always been crypto-bullish while the rest of America hasn't caught up, and what he'd tell a founder building a brand from scratch today — it's all in the full video. Watch full video → Sponsor message Business Strategy raises cash reserves to $3.225 billion, leaving bitcoin holdings unchanged Strategy sold 2.7 million MSTR shares for roughly $263.5 million through its ATM program last week, lifting its USD reserve to $3.225 billion while leaving its 843,775 BTC stash untouched — the second consecutive week it chose equity dilution over bitcoin sales. The move is a direct response to pressure on its preferred stock dividend structure: annual obligations have grown sharply and the company is prioritizing cash buffer over accumulation. At $64,700 per coin, the BTC treasury is worth roughly $55 billion. Read more → Markets Inside Cardano's 'Van Rossum' hard fork, and what it means for users Cardano's Van Rossum hard fork activated July 18, moving the network to protocol version 11 — but the bigger story is how it happened. For the first time in Cardano's history, the upgrade was proposed, debated, and ratified entirely through its onchain governance system, without Input Output directing the outcome. Delegated representatives voted 78.97% in favor, well above the 60% threshold; the constitutional committee unanimously approved it; and pool operators cleared it 53% to 47%. The fork lowers smart contract execution costs and lays procedural groundwork for Ouroboros Leios, the scaling upgrade expected later in 2026 that will actually change what users feel. Read more → Know someone who should be reading this? Share this newsletter See all of CoinDesk’s newsletters    CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York,NY,10011,USA, Unsubscribe Manage Preferences   Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.