Open USD (OUSD), a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Stripe subsidiary Bridge and governed by a 200-plus member corporate consortium called Open Standard, went live on September 30, 2026 across Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Tempo. The token launched with $468 million in circulating supply, backed ...
"Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We're building money." — Zach Abrams, CEO, Open Standard
Open USD (OUSD), a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Stripe subsidiary Bridge and governed by a 200-plus member corporate consortium called Open Standard, went live on September 30, 2026 across Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Tempo. The token launched with $468 million in circulating supply, backed by $257.2 million in cash and $211.2 million in Treasuries and money-market funds.
Five founding partners — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, and Visa — committed more than $1 billion in initial liquidity and hold equal equity stakes in the entity. The consortium's broader membership includes BlackRock, BNY, DBS, Standard Chartered, American Express, Google, Aave, and MetaMask. OUSD charges zero fees for minting and redemption and returns most reserve income to partners after a management fee — a direct inversion of the economics that generated $10 billion in profit for Tether in 2025 alone.
The launch inserts a third entrant into a $303 billion stablecoin market that Tether (60.6% share, $183.4 billion) and Circle (24.5% share, $74.2 billion) have dominated for years. Whether a committee of 200 corporations can coordinate effectively enough to take share from two established issuers remains the central question.
OUSD is a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in October 2024. The token operates natively on four blockchains: Ethereum, Solana, Coinbase's Base L2, and Stripe-backed Tempo. At launch, it listed on Coinbase, Kraken, and Uniswap.
Dollar reserves are held across three custodians: BlackRock, Lead Bank, and BNY. Open Standard has committed to publishing monthly reserve attestations. Chainlink serves as the oracle provider, feeding price data across supported chains.
The first-day circulating supply stood at $468.4 million. Reserve composition broke down as follows: $257.2 million in cash deposits and $211.2 million in short-duration Treasury securities and money-market funds. More than $400 million of initial liquidity was deployed on Tempo, Stripe's proprietary blockchain.
Zach Abrams, formerly co-founder of Bridge, left Stripe to serve as Open Standard's full-time CEO. His departure signals that the project operates as a standalone entity, not a Stripe subsidiary, though the Stripe relationship remains structural: Bridge issues the token, Stripe routes payments through it, and Tempo hosts much of its liquidity.
The stablecoin business model has been among the most profitable in financial services. Tether reported $1.04 billion in net profit for Q1 2026 and $1.5 billion for Q2, generated almost entirely from interest on reserves. At approximately $184 billion in circulating supply and early-2026 T-bill yields near 4.3%, Tether's reserve portfolio generates roughly $6 billion in annual income. Tether retains the vast majority. Circle, the second-largest issuer, retains reserve income but pays substantial distribution fees — more than $908 million to Coinbase under a revenue-sharing agreement where Coinbase keeps 100% of interest on USDC held on its platform and 50% on USDC held elsewhere.
OUSD inverts this extraction model. The token charges zero fees for minting and redemption — no spread, no volume cap. Nearly all reserve income flows to consortium partners, minus a management fee retained by Open Standard. The economic incentive for partners is direct: the more OUSD a partner helps mint and circulate, the larger its share of reserve yield.
Equity in Open Standard itself will be distributed over four to five years based on each partner's contribution to OUSD supply growth and transaction activity. This means founding partners do not receive preferential economics — their equity allocation depends on performance metrics, not their founding status.
At the $468 million launch supply, the reserve income pool is modest: approximately $20 million annually at current T-bill rates, split across 200-plus partners. The model only becomes economically meaningful at scale. At $10 billion in supply — still less than 7% of USDC's current circulation — annual reserve income would approach $430 million.
Open Standard's partner roster spans four categories:
Payments and fintech: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, Shopify, DoorDash
Banking and asset management: BlackRock, BNY, BBVA, DBS, Standard Chartered, SBI Holdings, UBS, Jeeves
Crypto-native infrastructure: Coinbase, Aave, MetaMask, Morpho, Solana Foundation, OKX
Technology: Google
The consortium grew from 140 organizations at announcement (June 30, 2026) to more than 200 by the September 30 launch date. Five founding partners — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, and Visa — committed over $1 billion in collective liquidity and received equal initial equity stakes.
Governance is structured around a partner board rather than single-issuer control. Partners participate in governance decisions and share reserve economics. This multi-stakeholder model is structurally distinct from both Tether (single private issuer, opaque governance) and Circle (single public issuer, USDC distributed through bilateral partnerships).
In early July 2026, within days of the initial announcement, Samsung, Dunamu (the operator of South Korea's largest exchange, Upbit), Shinhan Bank, and K-Bank all publicly denied formal participation in the consortium. Samsung stated it "had not held official consultations with Open Standard and did not know what role it was expected to play." According to Unchained Crypto, at least one company first learned of its listing through media reports.
Open Standard's response was limited. The company did not publicly retract the listings or explain the discrepancy. The incident raised legitimate questions about how "partner" was defined across 140-plus organizations — whether it meant equity commitment, signed letter of intent, exploratory conversation, or unilateral inclusion.
This credibility incident is material. A consortium-based stablecoin derives its value proposition from the breadth and depth of its partner network. If the partner count is inflated, the economic model's scaling assumptions weaken proportionally.
Coinbase occupies a unique position: it is simultaneously the largest distributor of Circle's USDC and an equal founding partner in the consortium seeking to replace it. The economics explain the move.
Under the existing Circle-Coinbase revenue-sharing agreement (established 2023), Coinbase keeps 100% of interest income on USDC reserves held on its platform and 50% of interest on USDC held elsewhere. Circle has paid over $908 million in distribution fees to Coinbase — more than half of Circle's total revenue. Despite these payments, Coinbase holds no equity in Circle and no governance rights over USDC.
Under the OUSD model, Coinbase receives an equal founding equity stake in Open Standard, shares in governance, and earns reserve income proportional to the OUSD supply it generates. The OUSD arrangement offers Coinbase ownership upside that USDC never did.
Circle's stock dropped roughly 17% on the day of the OUSD announcement in late June 2026, falling to approximately $62 per share. The stock partially recovered to $94.49 by September 21 before falling again ahead of OUSD's live launch. Mizuho cut its Circle price target, citing the Coinbase-OUSD dynamic as a structural threat to USDC distribution economics.
The August 2026 renegotiation of the Coinbase-Circle revenue-sharing agreement was expected to test whether Coinbase would use OUSD as leverage or begin actively transitioning volume away from USDC.
The GENIUS Act, enacted July 18, 2025, established a federal licensing framework for "permitted payment stablecoin issuers." Key requirements include: one-to-one reserve backing, monthly attested disclosure, approved issuer licensing, and a prohibition on paying interest or yield to holders based solely on holding the stablecoin.
OUSD's model requires careful navigation. The token does not pay yield to holders — reserve income flows to partners (businesses), not retail holders. This distinction likely keeps OUSD outside the yield-payment prohibition. However, the GENIUS Act's $10 billion threshold triggers mandatory federal oversight: any state-regulated issuer exceeding $10 billion in outstanding supply must transition to federal regulation.
Bridge currently holds state-level money transmission licenses. If OUSD scales past $10 billion — the level at which its economic model becomes attractive to large partners — the issuer must either obtain federal licensing through the OCC or apply for a waiver. This creates a regulatory cliff precisely at the scale where the consortium model becomes viable.
Additionally, the equity-for-usage structure may attract scrutiny under securities law. If equity distribution to partners is contingent on supply growth and transaction volume, regulators could evaluate whether partner tokens or equity stakes constitute investment contracts. Open Standard has not publicly addressed this question.
The stablecoin market stood at approximately $303 billion as of September 2026. The competitive landscape:
| Stablecoin | Issuer | Supply | Market Share | Model | |---|---|---|---|---| | USDT | Tether | $183.4B | 60.6% | Single issuer, retains all reserve income | | USDC | Circle | $74.2B | 24.5% | Single issuer, pays distribution fees | | OUSD | Bridge/Open Standard | $0.47B | 0.15% | Consortium, shares reserve income |
USDC captures 60-70% of adjusted on-chain transaction volume despite trailing USDT in supply — indicating higher velocity and greater use in DeFi and payments. OUSD launches into the volume-intensive segment where USDC is strongest.
Tether's 2026 profitability ($2.54 billion through H1 2026) demonstrates the scale of value currently extracted by issuers from holders. Tether holds approximately $141 billion in direct and indirect U.S. Treasury exposure, making it the 17th-largest holder of Treasuries globally. The reserve income that Tether keeps is the same income pool OUSD proposes to redistribute.
The consortium faces a cold-start problem. USDC and USDT have years of exchange integrations, DeFi protocol listings, bridge support, and payment rails. OUSD launched on four exchanges (Coinbase, Kraken, Uniswap, and internal Tempo pools). Expansion to other major venues — Binance, OKX, Bybit — will determine whether the $468 million launch supply reflects a floor or a ceiling.
Governance friction. Managing competing interests among 200-plus corporations — including direct competitors Visa and Mastercard — creates coordination challenges that single-issuer models do not face. Consortium-based projects (Diem/Libra being the most prominent example) have historically struggled to reach consensus on critical decisions.
Partner count credibility. The Samsung incident demonstrated that the reported partner count may not reflect binding commitments. The distinction between "partner" and "interested party" remains unclear for organizations outside the five founding members.
Concentration in Tempo. More than $400 million of the $468 million launch liquidity sits on Tempo, Stripe's blockchain. This concentrates initial liquidity on a single, proprietary chain controlled by one founding partner. Whether liquidity distributes across Ethereum, Solana, and Base — the chains where DeFi and payments volume actually occurs — will determine real adoption.
Issuer dependency. Bridge, a Stripe subsidiary, is the sole issuer. Despite the consortium governance structure, token issuance remains centralized in one entity with a corporate parent. If Stripe's strategic priorities shift, OUSD's issuance infrastructure could be affected.
Economic viability threshold. At $468 million in supply, annual reserve income is approximately $20 million — split across 200 partners, that is roughly $100,000 per partner per year. The economics only work at multi-billion-dollar scale, but reaching that scale requires partners to invest in integration before the economics justify it.
OUSD represents the first structurally credible attempt to challenge the Tether-Circle duopoly, not through technology or regulatory arbitrage, but through economic realignment. The proposition is straightforward: the $6 billion in annual reserve income that Tether currently extracts from stablecoin holders should flow to the businesses that distribute and use the token.
The consortium's name list is substantial. The economics are rational. The Coinbase defection from USDC exclusivity is a concrete signal that even USDC's most important partner sees value in an alternative model.
What remains unproven is whether 200 corporate boardrooms can execute with the speed of two companies. Tether ships product decisions through a small, centralized team. Circle operates as a public company with a focused management structure. OUSD must coordinate Visa, Mastercard, Google, BlackRock, and 196 other organizations — many of whom compete directly — on everything from chain deployment to fee structure to regulatory response.
The $468 million launch supply places OUSD at 0.15% of the total stablecoin market. To reach the $10 billion threshold where both economics and federal regulation kick in, the consortium must grow supply by 21x. Whether OUSD reaches that level will depend less on the logos on its partner page and more on whether businesses actually route payments through it.