Open Standard Launches Open USD (OUSD) Stablecoin With $1 Billion in Liquidity Commitments

Four Chains, One Dollar Token

Open Standard brought its Open USD (OUSD) stablecoin to market on Wednesday, going live on Ethereum, Solana, Coinbase's Base and Stripe-backed Tempo. The Open USD (OUSD) price is designed to track the U.S. dollar one-to-one, with reserves held at no less than full parity. Five founding partners, Coinbase (COIN), Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa (V), have committed more than $1 billion to establish OUSD liquidity over the coming months, and each received an equal initial equity stake in the issuing company. The size of each firm's investment was not disclosed. CEO Zach Abrams said partners will support the token in whatever form suits their business, whether holding OUSD on balance sheets, keeping tokens onchain or supporting market-making. His framing is deliberate: rivals are building a fund, while Open Standard is, in his words, "building money." The launch lands in a stablecoin market worth more than $300 billion, where Tether's USDT circulates roughly $143 billion and Circle's USDC about $74 billion. Open Standard is not chasing a niche; it is attacking the incumbents' distribution advantage head-on, and the names behind it control some of the largest payment rails in the world.

Reserve Yield Goes to Distributors

The economic design is the launch's real differentiator. Businesses can mint and redeem OUSD with no fees and no volume caps, and nearly all of the reserve income, after a small management fee, flows back to the participants that grow adoption. Issuance and redemption sit with Bridge Building Inc., the Stripe-owned issuer, while BNY and Lead Bank provide reserve banking and BlackRock manages the Treasury holdings; backing covers cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries and eligible money market funds at a minimum one-to-one ratio. Founding partners get no special revenue entitlement. They earn rewards on the OUSD supply they generate under the same framework available to every other partner. Abrams, who co-founded and led Bridge before Stripe acquired it for $1.1 billion in 2024, said the overwhelming majority of Open Standard's cap table will be distributed over the next four to five years to founders and network participants. Partners meeting a minimum threshold can earn equity through a combination of supply and transaction activity; the threshold itself was not disclosed. He rejects the consortium label: management runs the company, the founding group holds ownership and governance, and he expects it to expand from five to roughly 10 to 12 firms, with a board drawn from its members.

A Network Past 200 Companies

Open Standard's integration network has grown from more than 140 companies at its June debut to over 200, with Japan's SBI Holdings, Swiss bank UBS and fintech Jeeves among the newest names; BlackRock, BNY and Standard Chartered were already on the June roster. The partners extend beyond the founding group. On August 28, Dunamu, operator of South Korean exchange Upbit, announced a Visa partnership covering stablecoin payments, international remittances and AI-driven financial services, though it described its Open Standard involvement as a proposal under review rather than an issuance agreement. On the supply side, Tempo chief business officer Dan Romero said fee-free minting and burning could cut costs for companies moving large sums between bank dollars and stablecoins. He projected roughly $1 billion of OUSD on Tempo within months, more than $10 billion during 2027 and potentially over $100 billion in later years, with Tempo competing to become the token's deepest liquidity pool. Those are expectations, not confirmed balances. Pressure on incumbents is already visible: on July 15, Mizuho cut Circle's price target from $85 to $50 and downgraded the stock to Underperform, raising its 2027 distribution and transaction expense ratio estimate from 64% to 73% while cutting the adjusted EBITDA forecast from $1.09 billion to $699 million. Coinbase, Visa and Mastercard remain USDC partners.

What Open Standard Did Not Disclose

The three threads point to one shift: the contest has moved from issuing a digital dollar to owning its distribution. Open Standard's official launch announcement confirms the go-live and the $1 billion in partner liquidity commitments, but leaves three items blank: the size of each founder's investment, the supply-and-activity threshold partners must clear to earn equity, and any confirmed figure for OUSD already in circulation. Issuing natively on four networks also sidesteps much of the cross-chain bridge exposure that multi-chain dollar tokens normally carry. If reserve revenue sharing works as described, Tether's model of retaining most interest income faces its first structural challenge at scale.

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