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

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, the stock price of USDC issuer Circle (NYSE: CRCL) experienced a decline of approximately 15% to 18%. Despite having zero circulating supply and not yet being officially launched, the release of OUSD captured market attention.

Behind OUSD is a cooperative network comprising over 140 institutions, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase, and Google. The project is not positioned as a single company's proprietary product. Instead, it attempts to adjust the existing business logic of stablecoins, promoting their evolution toward a public financial infrastructure. Similar to traditional bank clearing systems or credit card networks, it is 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 current global stablecoin market capitalization has exceeded $300 billion. The market is primarily dominated by Tether (USDT, with a market cap of approximately $1840-1860 billion) and Circle (USDC, with a market cap of approximately $730-740 billion), together holding about 86% of the market share.

The prevailing business model involves issuers absorbing user funds and investing them in underlying assets such as short-term U.S. Treasury bonds. The reserve interest constitutes the primary income for the issuer. For example, in the first quarter of 2026, approximately 94% to 96% of Circle's total revenue came from reserve interest.

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

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

2. Reserve Revenue Sharing. All revenue generated from OUSD's underlying assets, after deducting a small management fee for maintaining technical and compliance operations, will be proportionally distributed to ecosystem partners. This changes the model where issuers exclusively retain interest, allowing participants who provide payment channels, merchant networks, and liquidity to receive tangible economic returns.

3. Alliance Governance. A board composed of representatives from multiple enterprises will collectively vote on rules, fee adjustments, and future development, preventing any single company from controlling the system. OUSD abandons the architecture of single-company control; its major decisions will be jointly made by a board of partner institutions.

This model challenges the existing profit distribution structure. Take Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., as an example. It currently holds approximately 25% of the circulating USDC and receives a corresponding share of reserve interest from Circle according to an existing agreement. The revenue-sharing agreement between Coinbase and Circle is up for renewal negotiations in August 2026. Interestingly, Coinbase is listed as a founding member among the 140 institutions in OUSD's partnership network, objectively increasing its bargaining leverage ahead of the renewal talks and putting pressure on the market to reassess the old "issuer-dominated revenue" model.

3. The Networking of Stablecoins

The launch of OUSD represents a strategic restructuring by traditional payment institutions and technology companies in the digital payment 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 a co-founder of Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company acquired by Stripe. Stripe's active participation in building OUSD signals its ambition to transform from a mere payment interface provider into a foundational capital flow network. This is particularly aimed at preparing for the upcoming Agentic Commerce. Agentic Commerce refers to an economic model where AI programs replace humans to automatically complete cross-platform commercial transactions such as price comparisons, purchases, subscriptions, and settlements. In this model, machine-to-machine transactions require extremely high frequency and minimal friction costs, and the open standard championed by OUSD is designed to meet these automated settlement needs.

2. Card Networks

In the current stablecoin ecosystem, traditional card networks like Visa and Mastercard primarily act as fiat on-ramp/off-ramp channels. An on-ramp/off-ramp channel is a bridging service for exchanging fiat currency (e.g., USD, EUR) for cryptocurrencies on the blockchain and vice versa. In this old model, card networks could only earn meager transaction 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 era of digital payments.

3. Coinbase's Role

In this changing landscape, the actions of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase are noteworthy. Coinbase has been a long-term, deep partner of USDC issuer Circle, bound by a crucial profit-sharing agreement that is up for renewal negotiations in August 2026. However, Coinbase has prominently chosen to join the OUSD alliance. This move reflects a hedging strategy: ensuring it is not marginalized in a diversified stablecoin market, while also increasing its negotiating power in the upcoming renewal talks by supporting a competing standard.

Overall, the competitive dimension in the stablecoin industry is shifting. Market focus is moving from simply "which company's coin has a larger market cap" to "who can master the widely accepted payment standard and distribution network."

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

The innovation in OUSD's mechanisms is closely tied to the latest changes in the US and global regulatory environment, representing a concrete effort to seek commercial space within the legal framework.

1. Leveraging the GENIUS Act

The launch of OUSD coincided with the enactment of US regulatory policy. In July 2025, the US formally passed the GENIUS Act, a federal law specifically designed to regulate stablecoins. It requires stablecoins to have one-to-one reserve backing by low-risk assets like US dollars and imposes strict audit and disclosure standards. The passage of this act removed 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 an important provision: prohibiting issuers from paying interest to token holders. This is a ban on paying interest to end-users holding the stablecoin. Regulators, aiming to prevent stablecoins from being legally classified as securities, explicitly forbid the direct distribution of reserve interest to ordinary individual token holders.

To achieve benefit-sharing while complying with this ban, OUSD has adopted a differentiated distribution strategy: it does not pay interest to individual end-users but instead, after deducting management fees, distributes the reserve revenue proportionally to the distribution networks and infrastructure participants (such as payment companies, merchant platforms, etc.) that facilitate its circulation.

3. Regulatory Challenges in Europe and Global Markets

Despite finding a compliance path in the US market, OUSD's alliance 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 identified, single authorized issuing entity. However, OUSD is a loose alliance of over 140 institutions. In practical legal operations, institutional conflicts arise regarding who should apply for a license as a single entity and who bears unified anti-money laundering responsibilities. Balancing multi-stakeholder alliance governance with the clear entity responsibility demanded by regulators is a challenge 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 significant challenges from the existing industry landscape and its own alliance structure during actual implementation.

1. The New Distribution Model Remains Unproven

The launch of OUSD prompted varied reactions from the executives of existing stablecoin giants. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of USDC issuer Circle, expressed clear skepticism. He pointed out the strong "winner-takes-all" effect in the stablecoin market, where the dominant player captures nearly the entire market share, making it difficult for competitors to survive. Allaire argued that distributing all reserve revenue is effectively "starving the infrastructure," depriving the system of sufficient funds for ongoing investment in compliance, security, and technology development. He also emphasized that alliance 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 tone, publicly stating: "Welcome OUSD. Player 2 has joined the game." Meanwhile, Zach Abrams, CEO of OUSD operator Open Standard, reiterated their positioning, emphasizing that OUSD is a stablecoin designed specifically for the internet economy and co-created by the enterprises driving its growth.

2. The Fake Partnership Controversy

Shortly after the project announcement, OUSD faced a severe credibility crisis. According to media reports, several Korean companies listed among the initial 140 partner institutions (e.g., Samsung Electronics, Dunamu, K Bank) clarified that they had not signed any formal cooperation agreement with Open Standard. They stated they were only in the preliminary stages of understanding and were surprised to be named on the list. In the US, advisors to some listed entities also indicated that certain companies had never agreed to anything.

3. Historical Lessons

The biggest challenge for OUSD is the deep liquidity moat and extensive trading pairs of the existing giants. The more trading pairs a stablecoin has (e.g., for buying Bitcoin directly), the more useful it is considered. A newly issued OUSD will need a long time to convince the market to build equivalent capital depth. Furthermore, history offers a cautionary tale. In 2019, the Libra (later renamed Diem) project led by Facebook also boasted a powerful corporate alliance including Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe, but ultimately disbanded under regulatory pressure and internal interest conflicts. OUSD must prove that its 140 competing institutions can align on governance, standards, and rule enforcement to avoid a similar fate.

6. Conclusion: A Shift in Value Distribution

In summary, the emergence of Open USD may not directly replace USDC or shake USDT's dominant market cap position in the short term. However, its impact on the stablecoin industry is profound and irreversible. It appears to be a foundational system connecting banks, payment companies, merchants, and users, designed to efficiently and cost-effectively handle global capital transfers. The core significance of OUSD lies in its public challenge to the existing rules of profit distribution, shifting the focus from the exclusive model of a single issuer to the sharing of benefits across the entire ecosystem.

Whether OUSD ultimately succeeds in establishing a global payment standard or becomes mired in internal coordination challenges, it has irreversibly posed a core question to the entire industry: If stablecoins are to become the infrastructure for future global commerce, should the enterprises providing their 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 arena themselves, the competitive logic of the stablecoin track has changed. It has shifted from "whose issued token is more compliant" to "whose dominant platform can distribute value more fairly."

This article is solely for legal, policy, and industry research exchange, 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 advice, tax advice, or other professional advice, nor does it constitute a recommendation, promotion, or solicitation for any financial product, digital asset, or commercial project. The regulatory rules, market data, and institutional information referenced in this article are primarily derived from public sources and may change due to updates in laws, regulations, regulatory policies, market conditions, and project progress. Readers are advised to make independent judgments based on the latest publicly available information and comply with the applicable laws and regulations of their respective countries or regions. The author and publishing platform assume no responsibility for any investment, trading, or other business decisions made based on the content of this article.