What is OUSD, the new player that caused Circle's stock to plunge 17% in a single day? The new stablecoin model that 140 giants have entered

1. Introduction: Open USD

On June 30, 2026, Open Standard announced the launch of a new stablecoin pegged to the US dollar (Open USD, OUSD).

On the day of the announcement, shares of USDC issuer Circle (NYSE: CRCL) experienced a decline of approximately 15% to 18%. Despite having zero circulating supply and not being officially live, the launch of OUSD captured market attention.

Behind OUSD is a cooperation network comprising over 140 institutions, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase, and Google. The project does not position itself as a proprietary product of a single company. Instead, it attempts to adjust the business logic of existing stablecoins, pushing their evolution towards public financial infrastructure. This is analogous to traditional bank clearing systems or credit card networks – a foundational network jointly maintained by multiple institutions, upon which everyone can build services, rather than being privately controlled by a single company.

2. OUSD Design and Revenue Distribution

The global stablecoin market currently has a total market capitalization exceeding $300 billion. The market is primarily dominated by Tether (USDT, market cap ~$184-186 billion) and Circle (USDC, market cap ~$73-74 billion), which together hold approximately 86% of market share.

The prevailing business model involves issuers absorbing user funds and investing them in underlying assets like short-term US Treasury bonds. Reserve interest constitutes the primary income for issuers; this refers to the earnings generated when issuers take the money users provided in exchange for stablecoins and invest it in government bonds or deposit it in banks. For instance, in the first quarter of 2026, approximately 94% to 96% of Circle's total revenue came from reserve interest.

Addressing this structure, Open Standard designed three core mechanisms for OUSD:

1. Zero-Cost Minting and Redemption. Minting is the process where enterprises or users exchange fiat currency with the issuer for an equivalent amount of stablecoins; redemption is the reverse operation, exchanging stablecoins back to fiat currency. This is the essential gateway for funds entering and exiting the blockchain ecosystem. OUSD promises enterprise members conversion channels with no transaction volume limits and zero fees, aiming to reduce friction costs for large-scale commercial settlements.

2. Reserve Revenue Sharing. All revenue generated by OUSD's underlying assets, after deducting a small management fee to sustain technical and compliance operations, will be proportionally distributed to ecosystem partners. This alters the model where the issuer exclusively retains interest, providing tangible economic returns to participants who offer payment channels, merchant networks, and liquidity.

3. Consortium Governance. A board composed of representatives from multiple enterprises collectively votes to decide on rules, fee adjustments, and future development, preventing any single company from unilaterally controlling the system. OUSD has abandoned the single-company control structure; its major decisions will be made jointly by the board of collaborating institutions.

This model challenges the existing profit distribution structure. Take Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, as an example. It currently holds approximately 25% of the circulating USDC and receives a corresponding share of reserve interest from Circle based on an existing agreement. The revenue sharing agreement between Coinbase and Circle is due for renewal negotiations in August 2026. Interestingly, Coinbase, as a founding member, is also one of the 140 institutions in OUSD's cooperation list. Objectively, this increases its bargaining power ahead of the renewal negotiations and puts pressure on the old "issuer-dominated revenue" model for market reassessment.

3. The Networking of Stablecoins

The launch of OUSD represents a strategic restructuring by traditional payment institutions and technology companies within the digital payments space.

1. Stripe's Strategic Extension and Agentic Commerce

One of the core driving forces behind OUSD is the payment service provider Stripe. Zach Abrams, the current CEO of Open Standard, was previously the co-founder of Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company acquired by Stripe. Stripe's active participation in building OUSD signifies its goal is transforming from a mere payment interface provider to a foundational network for capital flow. This is particularly aimed at preparing for the upcoming Agentic Commerce – an economic model where AI programs replace humans to automatically perform cross-platform tasks like price comparison, purchasing, subscriptions, and settlements. In agentic commerce, transactions between machines require extremely high frequency and minimal friction costs, and the open standard OUSD advocates is designed precisely to meet the needs of this automated settlement.

2. Card Networks

Within the existing stablecoin ecosystem, traditional card networks like Visa and Mastercard primarily serve as fiat on-ramp/off-ramp channels. These channels are bridge services facilitating exchange between fiat currencies (e.g., USD, EUR) and cryptocurrencies on the blockchain. In this older model, card networks could only earn meager transaction processing fees. By joining the OUSD network as founding members, these card networks directly participate in the governance and economic distribution of the stablecoin ecosystem, significantly enhancing their strategic position in the digital payments era.

3. Coinbase's Role

The actions of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase are noteworthy in this scenario. Coinbase is a long-term, deep partner of USDC issuer Circle, with a crucial profit-sharing agreement between them that is up for renewal negotiation in August 2026. However, Coinbase has conspicuously chosen to join the OUSD consortium. This move reflects a hedging strategy: ensuring it is not marginalized in a diversified stablecoin market, while also increasing its bargaining power in the upcoming renewal negotiations by supporting a new competitive standard.

Overall, the competitive dimensions of the stablecoin industry are shifting. Market focus is moving from "Which company's issued token has a larger market cap?" to "Who can master a widely accepted payment standard and distribution network?"

4. Legal and Regulatory Dimensions: Compliance Exploration Under a New Framework

OUSD's mechanical innovation is closely tied to recent changes in the regulatory environment in the US and globally, representing a concrete effort to seek commercial space within the legal framework.

1. Leveraging the GENIUS Act

The launch of OUSD aligns temporally with the implementation of US regulatory policy. In July 2025, the US officially passed the GENIUS Act, a federal law specifically enacted to regulate stablecoins. It requires stablecoins to have one-to-one reserve backing with low-risk assets like US dollars and mandates strict auditing and disclosure standards. The passage of this act eliminated legal uncertainty for large financial institutions to participate in and jointly issue stablecoins, providing a clear basis for compliance.

2. Exploring Revenue Distribution

The GENIUS Act includes a key provision: prohibiting issuers from paying interest to token holders. This provision is a ban on paying interest to end-users. This means regulators, to prevent stablecoins from being legally classified as securities, explicitly forbid issuers from directly distributing reserve-generated interest to ordinary individual holders.

To comply with this ban while achieving benefit sharing, OUSD adopts a differentiated distribution strategy: it does not pay interest to end individual holders. Instead, after deducting management fees, it distributes the reserve revenue proportionally to the distribution network and infrastructure participants (e.g., payment companies, merchant platforms) that facilitate its circulation.

3. Regulatory Challenges in Europe and Global Markets

Despite finding a compliance pathway in the US market, OUSD's consortium model faces complex legal challenges in other global regions. Taking Europe's MiCAR (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) as an example, the MiCAR framework tends to require stablecoins to have a clearly designated single authorized issuing entity. For OUSD, a loose consortium of over 140 institutions, practical legal operation poses conflicts: Who applies for the license as the single entity? Who bears the unified anti-money laundering responsibility? Balancing multi-centered consortium governance with the clear entity responsibility demanded by regulators is a difficult problem OUSD must solve for its global expansion.

5. Industry Assessment and Potential Challenges: Can OUSD Break Through?

Despite its innovative business model and initial support from numerous large institutions, Open USD (OUSD) faces severe challenges from the existing industry landscape and its own consortium structure during actual implementation.

1. The New Distribution Model Remains Unproven

OUSD's launch elicited different reactions from executives of existing stablecoin giants. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of USDC issuer Circle, expressed clear skepticism. He pointed out that the stablecoin market exhibits a strong winner-takes-all effect. The dominant player captures almost the entire market share, leading to a situation where the strong get stronger, making it difficult for others to survive. Allaire argued that distributing all reserve revenue amounts to "starving the infrastructure," leaving the system without sufficient funds for sustained investment in compliance, security, and technological development. He also emphasized that consortium models historically suffer from slow decision-making and internal incentive misalignment.

In contrast, Paolo Ardoino, CEO of USDT issuer Tether, responded with a relatively relaxed stance, publicly stating, "Welcome OUSD. Player 2 has joined the game." Meanwhile, Zach Abrams, CEO of OUSD operator Open Standard, reiterated their positioning, emphasizing it is a stablecoin designed specifically for the internet economy and co-created by the enterprises driving its development.

2. The False Partnership Controversy

Shortly after the project announcement, OUSD faced a significant credibility crisis. According to media reports, several Korean companies listed among the initial 140 partners (such as Samsung Electronics, Dunamu, K-Bank) publicly clarified that they had not signed any formal cooperation agreement with Open Standard, stating they were only in the preliminary understanding phase and were surprised to be on the list. In the US, advisors to some institutions also indicated that certain companies claimed they never agreed to anything.

3. Historical Lessons

The biggest challenge OUSD faces is the established giants' deep liquidity moat and extensive trading pairs. A high number of trading pairs indicates a stablecoin's utility. Newly launched OUSD will require a long time to convince the market to build equivalent capital depth. Furthermore, historical precedents serve as a warning. In 2019, the Libra project (later renamed Diem), led by Facebook, also boasted a consortium of prestigious enterprises including Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe. However, it ultimately dissolved under regulatory pressure and internal conflicts of interest. OUSD must prove that its 140 competing institutions can maintain alignment on governance, standards, and rule enforcement to avoid repeating past mistakes.

6. Conclusion: A Shift in Value Distribution

Looking comprehensively, the emergence of Open USD may not directly replace USDC or challenge USDT's market dominance in circulation in the short term. However, its impact on the stablecoin industry is profound and irreversible. It is shaping up to be a foundational system connecting banks, payment companies, merchants, and users, designed specifically for efficient, low-cost global capital transfers. The core significance of OUSD is that it openly challenges the existing profit distribution rules, shifting the focus from the monopolistic model of a single issuer to the shared interests of the entire ecosystem.

Whether OUSD ultimately succeeds in establishing a global payment standard or becomes bogged down by internal coordination challenges within the consortium, it has irreversibly posed a core question to the entire industry: If stablecoins are to become the infrastructure for future global commerce, shouldn't the enterprises providing the use cases, distribution channels, and users be entitled to share in the system's revenue and governance? With Wall Street financial institutions and global payment giants entering the fray themselves, the competitive logic of the stablecoin track has changed. It has moved from "Whose issued token is more compliant?" to "Whose leading platform can distribute value more fairly?"

This article is solely for legal, policy, and industry research exchange purposes, aiming to provide an objective analysis of digital finance, stablecoins, digital assets, and related regulatory developments. It does not constitute any form of investment advice, legal opinion, tax advice, or other professional counsel, nor does it represent a recommendation, endorsement, or solicitation for any financial product, digital asset, or commercial project. The regulatory rules, market data, and institutional information referenced herein are primarily sourced from public materials and may be subject to changes due to evolving laws, regulations, policies, market conditions, and project developments. Readers are advised to exercise independent judgment based on the latest publicly available information and to comply with applicable laws and regulations in their respective countries or regions. The author and publishing platform assume no responsibility for any investment, trading, or other business decisions made in reliance on the content of this article.