Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock and 140 more firms just launched Open USD, a stablecoin with no single owner, and it sent Circle's stock tumbling 16 percent in a day.
Open USD (OUSD) is a new stablecoin backed by more than 140 companies, including Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and BlackRock, built as shared payments infrastructure that no single firm owns. Its unveiling on Tuesday sent shares of rival stablecoin issuer Circle tumbling nearly 16 percent.
At a Glance
- Circle (CRCL) shares fell about 16 percent to $63.99, extending a 39 percent slide over the past month, per Yahoo Finance
- Open USD is run by Open Standard, a newly formed independent operator led by CEO Zach Abrams
- Backers include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, Google, Shopify, Coinbase and Ripple
- Businesses can mint and redeem OUSD for free with no volume caps, and partners share reserve interest rather than the issuer alone
- The coin is expected to launch later this year
What Open USD Is Trying to Fix
The stablecoin market has grown into a multibillion dollar business, but the model has drawn steady complaints. Issuers typically charge fees to mint and redeem tokens at scale, and they keep the interest earned on the dollar reserves backing each coin. Open Standard says OUSD flips that arrangement: minting and redemption will be free with no caps, and the earnings on reserves will flow to partner companies instead of the issuer, minus a management fee.
Governance is structured differently too. Rather than a single corporate parent calling the shots, a board drawn from Open USD's partner companies will oversee the project. Organizers argue that shared control is what will convince a wide range of businesses to actually adopt it. Zach Abrams, who previously founded the stablecoin company Bridge before Stripe acquired it, put it plainly in a statement, saying existing stablecoins have real strengths but that scaling their use requires something open, cheap to run, fast, widely accessible, and aligned with the interests of the businesses using it.
Why Circle Got Hit
Circle issues USDC, one of the two dominant stablecoins alongside Tether's USDT, and its business model depends heavily on the interest income from reserves backing that coin. A rival stablecoin explicitly designed to strip issuers of that revenue and hand it to partner businesses instead is a direct threat to Circle's earnings structure. That helps explain why CRCL shares dropped sharply on the news, even though Coinbase, one of Circle's closest partners and co-founder of USDC, is also among the companies backing Open USD.
The overlap is awkward. Coinbase has a deep commercial relationship with Circle around USDC distribution, yet it has now put its name behind a competing project built around a fundamentally different economic model. Markets appear to be reading that as a signal that even Circle's allies see value in hedging toward an open, multi party alternative.
The Scale of the Backing
The list of companies involved is unusually broad for a single stablecoin launch, cutting across payments networks, banks, tech platforms and crypto firms.
| Category | Examples of Backers |
|---|---|
| Payments | Visa, Mastercard, American Express |
| Banking and asset management | BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered |
| Technology | Google, Shopify |
| Crypto | Coinbase, Ripple |
BlackRock's Samara Cohen described the effort as a constructive step toward giving businesses more choice in how they use stablecoins. BNY, meanwhile, has projected that the overall stablecoin market could grow to $1.5 trillion by 2030, a figure that underscores why so many large institutions want a stake in how the infrastructure gets built.
Risks Worth Watching
Open USD does not exist yet in any live, tested form. It is expected to go live later this year, but coordinating governance across more than 140 companies is a complex undertaking, and stablecoin projects with broad coalitions can stall on regulatory approval, technical integration, or disagreements over control. Crypto assets and the equities tied to them remain highly volatile, as Circle's stock move itself demonstrates. A single announcement, even about a product that hasn't launched, was enough to wipe out a large chunk of the company's market value in one session.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Open USD (OUSD)?
Open USD is a stablecoin backed by a coalition of more than 140 companies, run by an independent operator called Open Standard, designed so no single firm controls the coin's economics or governance.
Why did Circle's stock fall on this news?
Circle issues USDC and earns significant revenue from interest on its reserves. Open USD threatens that model by passing reserve earnings to partner businesses instead of the issuer, which pressured Circle's shares.
When will Open USD launch?
Open Standard has said Open USD is expected to go live later this year, though no specific date has been announced.
Is Coinbase abandoning USDC for Open USD?
No. Coinbase remains a key partner in USDC through its relationship with Circle, but it has also joined the Open USD coalition as a backer.
What Comes Next
The real test for Open USD will be adoption once it actually launches. A long list of famous backers is not the same as businesses routing real payment volume through the coin, and Circle's steep stock drop shows how sensitive markets already are to any shift in the stablecoin landscape's balance of power.
