On June 30, 2026, a very interesting piece of news emerged from the US stablecoin market. Open Standard announced the launch of a new US dollar stablecoin, Open USD, or OUSD for short. The list of participants in the announcement is impressive, including over 140 companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, American Express, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Shopify, Coinbase, Solana, and Ripple. If it were just "another US dollar stablecoin launched," this wouldn't be anything to get too excited about. The stablecoin market is never short of new names; what it truly lacks is liquidity, real-world applications, regulatory trust, and sustainable operational capabilities. But OUSD is different. What's truly interesting about OUSD isn't that it issued another coin, but that it brought a previously unspoken issue in the stablecoin industry to the forefront: Who should share the profits earned by stablecoin reserve assets? This is why I think OUSD is worth writing about. In the past few years, stablecoin issuers have used USD or equivalent assets redeemed by users as reserves. The interest generated by these reserves was primarily enjoyed by the issuer and a few core distribution partners. Payment companies, exchanges, wallets, merchant platforms, and developers helped stablecoins enter real-world scenarios, but they didn't necessarily share in the full economic returns. OUSD aims to change this distribution logic. In layman's terms, it's like a "cooperative" in the stablecoin world: instead of a single issuer monopolizing the majority of the profits, it brings in payment networks, financial institutions, technology platforms, and crypto gateways to promote, govern, and share the profits together. Open USD doesn't change the technology, but rather the revenue sharing method. According to Open Standard's official announcement, OUSD's design has three main aspects. First, there are no fees for corporate minting and redemption of OUSD, and there are no artificially set limits on the scale. This directly reduces usage costs for large, high-frequency institutional users. Second, the returns generated by OUSD reserve assets, after deducting a small management fee, will be distributed to partners. It's important to note that this doesn't mean ordinary holders can directly receive interest; rather, it returns the economic benefits of the stablecoin network to ecosystem participants. Third, OUSD will be operated by an independent company, Open Standard, and governed by a board of directors composed of partners. In other words, it attempts to avoid a single issuer completely controlling the stablecoin's roadmap, yield model, and governance arrangements. These three points combined are what truly make OUSD disrupt the existing market. Stablecoins may appear to be payment tools, but they are essentially a financial infrastructure business. Users hold one stablecoin, while the issuing system receives one US dollar in reserves. These reserves generate interest if invested in cash, short-term US Treasury bonds, or money market instruments. In a high-interest-rate environment, this is a considerable income. Previously, this income primarily belonged to the issuer. OUSD's logic is that since stablecoins rely on payment companies, merchant platforms, banks, exchanges, wallets, and developers to promote them, these channels shouldn't just be working for free. This isn't a minor adjustment. It directly impacts the core of the stablecoin industry. Why is Circle being repriced by the market? Following the OUSD announcement, Circle's stock price came under pressure. The market reaction was direct: if payment giants, banks, tech platforms, and crypto infrastructure companies begin to jointly promote a new USD stablecoin, the USDC growth story won't be as smooth as before. However, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire's response was restrained. He welcomed competition while emphasizing that USDC's network effects, regulatory access, liquidity, and years of ecosystem accumulation cannot be replicated with a stellar list. I think this response wasn't just empty talk. What Circle really wants to say is: stablecoins aren't about press conferences, they're about the network. USDC didn't happen overnight. It has exchange depth, on-chain integration, institutional clients, compliant disclosures, redemption capabilities, and a developer ecosystem. The more people use a stablecoin, the deeper its liquidity; the deeper the liquidity, the more people continue to use it. This network effect cannot be replaced by 140 logos in a single day. However, the threat from OpenUSD is also real. Because it's not a small company issuing its own token, but rather it has organized the downstream entry points for stablecoins. Behind names like Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Shopify, Coinbase, BlackRock, and BNY lie payment clearing, merchant acquiring, consumer scenarios, crypto trading, asset management, and custody capabilities, respectively. In the past, issuers found channels to distribute stablecoins. Open USD aims to have channel partners jointly define stablecoins. This is the reason Circle is being repriced by the market. Circle says it welcomes competition, but the pressure won't disappear. Circle's rebuttal has two layers. The first layer is the network effect. USDC has accumulated years of market trust and real-world use cases. What OUSD really needs to prove is not whether large companies endorse it, but whether these companies will bring in real cash flow, merchant traffic, and transaction scenarios. The second layer is the profit-sharing logic. Allaire means that Circle would normally share a large portion of its revenue with distribution partners, while retaining enough revenue to continue investing in infrastructure development. In other words, "profit sharing" isn't unique to OUSD; the key is how it's shared, to whom it's shared, and whether this model can support long-term development. This assessment makes sense. However, the market's concern isn't that OUSD will replace USDC tomorrow, but rather that the trend has changed. In the future, banks, payment companies, fintech platforms, and merchant networks may all enter the stablecoin issuance or distribution system. As long as people start asking, "Why do I help you bring in users and transactions, but can't I get more revenue?", Circle's business model will be continuously scrutinized. This is the core of the second half of the stablecoin competition. In the first half, the questions were: Who is more transparent? Who is more compliant? Whose reserves are more trustworthy? In the second half, the questions will be: Who controls the channels? Who controls the scenarios? Who shares the profits? The "cooperative model" sounds good, but history isn't always on its side. This isn't the first time a consortium-style stablecoin has appeared. The most typical example is Libra, later renamed Diem. In 2019, Facebook spearheaded a powerful alliance to launch a global stablecoin. Its lineup was equally impressive, attempting to integrate payments, technology, finance, and internet platforms into a single system. The outcome is well-known: the project faced global regulatory scrutiny, partners withdrew one after another, governance and compliance pressures accumulated, and ultimately, the assets were sold off, never truly launching to the public. OUSD is certainly not Diem. Today's regulatory environment and market maturity are vastly different. The US GENIUS Act was signed into law on July 18, 2025, establishing a federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins for the first time. While key obligations still need to be gradually implemented through subsequent rule-making, the regulatory boundaries regarding issuer eligibility, reserve arrangements, anti-money laundering, and sanctions compliance are much clearer than those of Libra/Diem. However, the old problems of alliance projects won't disappear automatically. How to achieve a cold start in liquidity? How do partners make decisions? Who is the reserve custodian? Are the redemption arrangements stable enough? Who is responsible for KYC, AML, sanctions screening, and the freezing mechanism? If interest rates fall in the future and reserve returns thin, can free minting and redemption and partner profit sharing still be sustained? These are the real tests for OUSD. Therefore, my attitude towards OUSD is: value its disruptive model, but don't presume on its success. It raises a good question, but a good question doesn't equal a good answer. For those working in the Asian sector, the real focus shouldn't be on the spectacle. This event offers three practical implications for Asian-based crypto payment, cross-border settlement, overseas e-commerce, and Web3 companies. First, the era of multiple stablecoins is arriving, and coin selection will become a compliance issue. Previously, companies primarily chose between USDT and USDC when using stablecoins for payments. In the future, if OUSD, bank-affiliated stablecoins, and payment institution stablecoins continue to emerge, companies may face an increasing demand for currency integration. However, integrating each new stablecoin is not simply adding another payment option. Companies need to assess the issuing entity, reserve assets, redemption arrangements, freezing mechanisms, on-chain deployment, custody structure, sanctions compliance, and user terms. Choosing a coin is not just a business issue; it requires the involvement of legal, financial, compliance, and risk control departments. Secondly, compliance is shifting from a moat to an entry ticket. In the past, USDC's key selling point compared to USDT was its greater transparency, compliance, and easier institutional acceptance. However, as the US stablecoin regulatory framework becomes clearer, more banks, payment companies, and fintech companies will enter the market within the rules. In the future, leading players will all emphasize compliance. Compliance will no longer be a differentiating advantage for a few, but rather an entry ticket. Third, the Asian market will not be rewritten in the short term, but corporate settlement scenarios are worth watching. USDT's liquidity position in the Asian OTC market and high-frequency trading scenarios will not be shaken by the fact that OUSD has not yet been launched. OUSD is not targeting retail investors, but rather enterprise-level fund transfers, merchant payments, cross-border payments, and platform settlements. If platforms such as Stripe, Shopify, Western Union, and Coinbase include OUSD in their default settlement paths in the future, the first to feel the change may not be retail investors in the cryptocurrency market, but rather companies engaged in overseas payment collection, overseas SaaS, cross-border trade, and crypto payments. Conclusion Open USD may not necessarily be a killer of USDC, nor will it necessarily shake the global liquidity of USDT. However, it has raised a sufficiently sharp question: who should share the economic benefits generated by stablecoins? If stablecoins are merely products of the issuer, and reserve returns primarily belong to the issuer, then logically it makes sense. But if stablecoins are becoming the underlying infrastructure of payment networks, then payment companies, merchant platforms, banks, exchanges, wallets, and developers will all demand to be at the table. Circle welcomes competition because it believes in the network effect and compliance accumulation of USDC. OpenUSD emphasizes open governance and shared returns because it sees the imbalance of interests among channel providers in the existing stablecoin model. This competition will not ultimately be decided by announcements or by 140 logos. It will be determined by real cash flow, real trading volume, real redemption pressure, and real regulatory scrutiny. But regardless of whether OpenUSD ultimately succeeds, it has already rewritten the way the stablecoin industry asks questions. From now on, any issuer that wants to exclusively enjoy reserve returns must first answer one question to the channel providers: Why?
JinseFinance