Open USD stablecoin consortium Stripe Coinbase Visa BlackRock challenges Circle Tether
Circle $CRCL fell about 8% after 140+ firms including Stripe, Coinbase $COIN, Visa $V and BlackRock $BLK unveiled Open USD, a rival stablecoin that lets partners keep the reserve yield issuers like Circle and Tether normally pocket. Per CoinDesk.
A consortium of more than 140 companies unveiled a new dollar stablecoin called Open USD on June 30, and the news sent shares of Circle $CRCL, the issuer of USDC, down about 8%. The backers read like a roster of the payments and finance establishment: Stripe, Coinbase $COIN, Visa $V, Mastercard $MA and BlackRock $BLK, alongside BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, U.S. Bank, Shopify $SHOP, Google, IBM $IBM and Ripple. The coin, issued by Open Standard, can be minted and redeemed at no cost and without volume caps, and it is set to roll out on the Solana network before going live later this year. The project is led by Zach Abrams, co-founder of Bridge, the stablecoin startup Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024. The detail that matters is where the money goes: Open USD lets its partners keep the earnings on the reserves backing the coin, minus a small operating fee. Reserve yield is the single most profitable part of running a stablecoin, and it is exactly what issuers like Circle and Tether currently keep for themselves. That is why the incumbents are exposed. Per reporting from CoinDesk.