Open USD stablecoin goes live with $1 billion from Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Shopify

Open USD, the dollar stablecoin from a company called Open Standard, went live on Wednesday on Ethereum, Solana, Coinbase's Base network and the Stripe-backed Tempo blockchain, CoinDesk reported, citing Open Standard chief executive Zach Abrams. Bloomberg also reported the launch.

Five companies are the founding partners and, for now, the only investors, each with an equal starting stake: Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa. Together they have committed more than $1 billion to build liquidity in the token over the coming months, per CoinDesk. Abrams previously co-founded Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe bought for $1.1 billion in 2024.

The number behind the number

Put the $1 billion next to the incumbents. CoinDesk puts Tether's USDT at about $143 billion in circulation and Circle's USDC at roughly $74 billion. The launch commitment is about 1.4% of USDC and 0.7% of USDT. Tempo's chief business officer, Dan Romero, told CoinDesk he sees a path to about $1 billion of the token on Tempo within months and more than $10 billion during 2027. That 2027 figure would be about 14% of USDC's current size.

So the supply threat to Circle is small at first. The ownership structure matters more, and many of the "Visa and Stripe launch a stablecoin" headlines leave that out.

The part the headline skips: who owns it

Stablecoin issuers earn interest on the reserves behind their tokens. CoinDesk notes that Circle shares part of its USDC reserve income with distribution partners such as Coinbase, while Tether keeps most of its own. Coinbase now also holds an equal founding stake in a competing issuer. Open Standard says it will hand the "overwhelming majority" of its equity to founders and other partners over the next four to five years, based on how much supply and transaction activity each one produces.

Put simply, the companies that decide which dollar token a checkout page or exchange defaults to now get paid in equity for picking this one. Founders get no special revenue share, per Abrams, and earn rewards on the same terms as other partners. Open Standard did not disclose the minimum a partner must reach to qualify.

Circle shares were at $83.00 at 2:55 p.m. ET on Wednesday, down 0.84%, according to Nasdaq data. Coinbase was down about 2% on the day in CoinDesk's quote panel.

Who it actually hits

• Online merchants. Shopify is a founder, and Open Standard is pitching the token for card settlement and cross-border payments. Tempo told CoinDesk it will charge no fees to mint or redeem the token, which matters most to businesses moving large sums in and out. Pricing for merchants has not been announced.
• Crypto traders: watch the ticker. The symbol OUSD is already used by Origin Dollar, an unrelated yield-bearing token on Ethereum, according to its own site at ousd.com. Check the contract address before you send funds to either one.
• Banks. The partner network has grown to more than 200 firms, including UBS and Japan's SBI Holdings. It is one of several shared-issuer projects. CoinDesk notes 37 European banks are backing the Qivalis euro stablecoin.

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Sources: CoinDesk; Bloomberg; Nasdaq; Origin Dollar. Prices are intraday and will change. This is market information, not investment advice.