Open USD Goes Live on 4 Chains as Coinbase, Stripe and Mastercard Commit $1B

A New Dollar Stablecoin Backed by Payments Giants

Open USD, or OUSD, went live on Wednesday across four blockchains: Ethereum, Solana, Coinbase’s Base and the Stripe-backed Tempo network. The coin comes from Open Standard, a company whose five founding partners, including Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify and Stripe, have committed more than $1 billion to seed its liquidity, CoinDesk reported.

The launch matters more because of who is behind it than because of what the token does. A dollar stablecoin is not new. A dollar stablecoin owned by the largest US crypto exchange, a global card network and two of the biggest names in online checkout is.

Open Standard first surfaced in June with 140 partners and launched with more than 200, including UBS and Japan’s SBI Holdings.

What Open Standard Actually Launched

OUSD is pegged one-to-one to the US dollar and is issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe bought for $1.1 billion in 2024. Reserves are held by BlackRock, Lead Bank, and BNY, and Open Standard says it will publish monthly attestations of what backs the coin.

Businesses can mint and burn OUSD at a one-to-one rate with no fees through several integration routes, including Stripe, Coinbase and Mastercard. Coinbase access was scheduled to switch on from 1 October. On Solana, the token is issued natively rather than as a wrapped copy, according to the Solana Foundation.

Chief executive Zach Abrams co-founded Bridge before the Stripe deal. “We want to be the most useful stablecoin, the same way the US dollar is useful,” he told CoinDesk.

How a Stablecoin Earns Money, and Why OUSD Shares It

A stablecoin holds its $1 value because every token in circulation is matched by a dollar’s worth of reserves, usually cash and short-term US Treasury bills. Users hand over dollars and the issuer mints tokens. When users redeem, the issuer burns the tokens and returns the cash.

The business lives in the gap. Those reserves earn interest, and with the Fed’s benchmark rate at 4% after September’s hike, a $100 billion pile of reserves yields roughly $4 billion a year. Tether and Circle keep that income for themselves and a small circle of distribution partners.

OUSD flips the model. Abrams told CoinDesk that the “overwhelming majority” of Open Standard’s equity will be distributed to partners over roughly four to five years, based on how much OUSD supply they create and how much transaction volume they drive. Founding partners get no special revenue share. “Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We’re building money,” Abrams said.

In plain terms, the companies that push OUSD into the world own a growing slice of the company that issues it.

A $312 Billion Market With Two Incumbents

The dollar stablecoin market totals roughly $312 billion, DefiLlama data shows. Tether’s USDT accounts for about $184 billion and Circle’s USDC for about $74 billion, so the two incumbents control more than 80% of the market between them.

OUSD’s first day looks small by comparison, with around $468 million in circulation across its four chains, per DefiLlama’s tracker. Most of that is likely to be the founding partners’ seed liquidity rather than organic demand, so the figure says more about commitment than adoption.

The second tier, where USDS, DAI and USD1 sit between $4 billion and $7 billion, is a bracket OUSD could reach within months if its partners deliver. For retail users who buy crypto and park funds in stablecoins between trades, the practical question is simpler: where can the coin be held, spent and redeemed.

Where the Money Could Flow First

Open Standard is pitching OUSD for banking, cross-border payments, card settlement, and institutional trading and lending, rather than retail speculation. That is where its owners already operate. Shopify runs checkout for millions of merchants, Stripe processes payments for a large share of the internet, and Mastercard completed its $1.8 billion takeover of stablecoin firm BVNK earlier this year, giving it rails that support OUSD from day one.

Tempo, the payments blockchain Stripe backs, is the clearest early channel. Dan Romero, Tempo’s chief business officer, told CoinDesk he expects $1 billion in OUSD on Tempo within months and more than $10 billion in 2027, with a path to beyond $100 billion over several years. Those are projections from an interested party, so they should be read as targets rather than forecasts.

What It Means for Circle and Tether

The pressure falls hardest on Circle. Coinbase is USDC’s most important distributor, and in a July note, Bernstein estimated the exchange earns roughly half of USDC’s reserve income, The Block reported. Coinbase now holds an equal founding stake in a rival issuer. Circle’s shares fell 17.5% after the consortium was first announced in June.

Tether appears less exposed. USDT’s lead rests on emerging-market trading and dollar savings outside the US, use cases OUSD is not pursuing at launch. For anyone comparing the best crypto exchange options for stablecoin trading, USDT and USDC liquidity remains far deeper than anything OUSD can offer in its first weeks. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino greeted the June announcement with “Welcome OUSD. Player 2 has entered the game.”

Why Distribution, Not Design, Is the Real Test

Stablecoins have never been won on technology. USDT took the lead by being wherever exchanges needed dollars, and USDC grew by riding Coinbase and a compliance-first reputation. OUSD’s bet is that giving distributors ownership turns them into evangelists.

Two questions will decide whether the bet pays off. The first is whether an equity stake vesting over four to five years is enough to move Shopify merchants and Stripe customers off rails that already work. The second is how regulators treat a consortium-owned issuer under the GENIUS Act, where Treasury’s rules are still being written.

If OUSD lands inside everyday checkouts and card settlements, that reach may matter more than any argument about reserve yields. If it stays a settlement token passed between its own owners, the market may conclude that $1 billion bought an expensive proof of concept. The next six months of circulation data should show which.