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Today’s Menu

• ChatGPT Just Became Your Personal Shopping Assistant

• Vanguard's $10 Trillion Crypto Reversal Coming

Markets

TODAY IN AI

ChatGPT Just Became Your Personal Shopping Assistant

OpenAI rolled out direct purchasing inside ChatGPT for U.S. users through a new feature called Instant Checkout, letting shoppers complete transactions without leaving the conversation.

The company partnered with Stripe to support Etsy sellers initially, with over 1M Shopify merchants coming soon. Users click a "Buy" button after ChatGPT suggests products, then review and pay in chat.

OpenAI open-sourced the underlying Agentic Commerce Protocol, enabling any retailer to integrate with minimal code changes. They collect fees from merchants on completed sales, but product rankings stay organic and determined by relevance.

This feels like an inflection point for agentic AI commerce. As shopping shifts to ChatGPT, this merchant fee structure could become a massive new revenue stream for OpenAI while fundamentally changing how consumers discover and buy products.

The era of conversational commerce just went mainstream.

TODAY IN CRYPTO

Vanguard's $10 Trillion Crypto Reversal Coming

The world's second-largest asset manager is preparing to drop its crypto ban after staying stubbornly on the sidelines since Bitcoin ETFs launched in January.

Vanguard, managing $10 trillion in assets, is laying groundwork to let brokerage clients access third-party crypto ETFs. They're not launching their own products yet - this is purely about client demand they can no longer ignore.

The timing isn't coincidental. Vanguard's new CEO Salim Ramji is a BlackRock veteran who personally oversaw Larry Fink's IBIT Bitcoin ETF - now holding $80B in assets. While rivals like Fidelity, Schwab, and BlackRock raced ahead, Vanguard stayed proudly anti-crypto.

But with Trump's SEC fast-tracking approvals and clients demanding access, the excuses evaporated. Wall Street's biggest players aren't testing waters anymore - they're being dragged in by clients, regulation, and fear of being left behind.

When $10 trillion says "yes," the final wall cracks. Vanguard's reversal isn't just another adoption milestone - it's the moment institutional resistance officially dies.

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Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Damon James