Open USD Unveiled With 140+ Backers as Circle Falls Over 17%
A group of more than 140 companies unveiled a shared dollar stablecoin on 30 June, structured to remove the revenue that funds the largest existing issuers. The token, Open USD (OUSD), comes from Open Standard, a new organization led by founding chief executive Zach Abrams. Under the announced terms, businesses will be able to mint and redeem OUSD without fees and with no volume caps, and the income earned on the reserves backing the token will be returned to participating partners, less a management fee. Named backers include Stripe, Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard and BlackRock. Circle, one of the two incumbent issuers the model targets alongside Tether, fell more than 17% and closed below $63.
The Incumbent Model: Revenue Sits in the Reserves
A dollar stablecoin is a token intended to hold a fixed value of one US dollar, backed by reserve assets the issuer holds against every token in circulation. Issuers generally do not charge users for the transfer itself. The money is made on the float, the pool of reserves standing behind tokens in circulation, which generates interest income that the issuer keeps. That arrangement scales with the amount outstanding, which is why issuers compete on distribution: every additional token in circulation adds to the reserve pool without adding a proportional cost. According to the announcement, OUSD is aimed squarely at that arrangement, which currently funds both Circle and Tether.
The OUSD Terms: No Fees, No Caps, Income Passed Back
The consortium's design removes both sides of that equation. Minting and redemption are to be free and uncapped, so businesses moving large volumes face no issuance cost and no ceiling on how much they can create or redeem. The reserve income, rather than accruing to a single company, is to be returned to the participating partners, with Open Standard retaining a management fee. Governance is structured the same way: an independent board composed of the partners rather than a single issuer, meaning decisions about the token do not rest with one firm whose revenue depends on the float. For a payments company or a merchant platform, the pitch is that the economics of holding and moving dollars on-chain flow back to the businesses generating the volume.
The Backers: Payments, Banks and Crypto Infrastructure Together
Open Standard named more than 140 partners at launch, spanning card networks, banks, asset managers, commerce platforms and crypto infrastructure. Among them:
- Payments and cards: Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Mercado Pago.
- Banks and asset managers: BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, U.S. Bank, BBVA.
- Crypto and custody: Coinbase, Ripple, Solana, Polygon, Aave, MetaMask, Fireblocks, Anchorage Digital.
- Technology and commerce: Google, IBM, Samsung, Shopify, Crypto.com.
The effort is led by Zach Abrams, who co-founded Bridge, acquired by Stripe in 2024, and who was previously a product lead at Coinbase. That background places the consortium close to the payment processors that route stablecoin volume rather than to the issuers that mint it.
What Is Not Settled: No Chain Named and No Live Token
The market reaction landed on the incumbent rather than the newcomer. Circle shares fell more than 17% on the day and closed below $63, a four-month low and roughly 55% below where they traded in mid-May. Circle's chief executive publicly questioned the viability of the model. Much of the proposal was also still unspecified at announcement: the token was slated to go live later in 2026, and no host chain was named. What matters next is whether the named partners route real volume through OUSD once it exists, and whether an issuer-less board can move as quickly as a single company.