Open USD Stablecoin Debuts With 140-Plus Backers Led by Visa and Coinbase

Crypto News

A new dollar stablecoin called Open USD launched on Tuesday with more than 140 corporate backers, one of the broadest alliances ever assembled around digital money. The official announcement from issuer Open Standard confirms that Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock and BNY have all signed on, alongside crypto names including Ripple, Solana and OKX. The token is positioned as business infrastructure rather than a consumer product, and the company says it will go live later this year. Reserve composition, supported blockchains and total expected volume are not yet disclosed, a transparency gap our desk flags as the central unknown ahead of the planned launch.

The economic design is the sharpest break from incumbents. According to the company release, businesses will be able to mint and redeem Open USD at no cost and with no volume caps, while partners receive all earnings from the token’s reserves, minus a small management fee. Governance sits with a partner board rather than a single issuer. That structure directly targets the model used by market leaders, which retain the interest earned on their reserves. Founding chief executive Zach Abrams framed the token as purpose-built for scale, describing it as a stablecoin designed by the businesses that will actually move dollars through it.

The market reaction landed hardest on Circle. Its publicly traded shares fell roughly 13% on Tuesday to about $66, the weakest level since late February, as investors weighed the threat to USDC reserve economics. Coinbase, which earns a share of USDC reserve revenue under its agreement with Circle, slipped about 4% even as it joined the rival network. Circle’s chief executive played down the competition, saying the firm welcomed continued innovation and would keep expanding USDC across banking, payments and capital-markets partners. The dueling incentives — backing a competitor while collecting fees from the incumbent — underline how unsettled stablecoin revenue models have become.

The launch arrives against a backdrop of rapidly rising expectations for the sector. BlackRock’s global market development lead pointed to a substantial opportunity ahead, with the asset manager projecting the stablecoin market could reach $1.5 trillion by 2030. That figure helps explain why payments networks, banks and fintechs are converging on shared infrastructure rather than building competing rails. Our reading is that the breadth of the partner roster — spanning American Express, Klarna, Western Union, Google, Shopify and DoorDash — signals these institutions now treat stablecoins as core settlement infrastructure rather than a niche crypto product, a meaningful shift in posture for traditional finance.

Distribution is where Stripe’s involvement matters most. The payments processor said Open USD would become the default stablecoin for businesses running on its platform, a commitment that could route large volumes onto the token from day one. Stripe’s connection runs deeper than a partnership: Abrams co-founded Bridge, the stablecoin startup Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024. Stripe executives framed the move as a long-term bet on commerce, saying they were building for the economy of 2040 rather than today. DoorDash joined to speed payouts for couriers and merchants, while remittance firms cited faster, cheaper local-currency access for customers operating outside the United States.

On-chain momentum is already visible among launch partners. Aptos disclosed that the stablecoin market capitalization on its network hit a record above $2 billion in June, an all-time high for the chain, with Aptos Labs joining Open Standard as a launch partner. The wallet and custody side is equally crowded, with Fireblocks, MetaMask, Anchorage Digital and Ledger participating. Fireblocks’ chief executive said joining marked the industry consolidating around shared infrastructure rather than fragmented, competing systems. Notably, Alphabet’s Google appears on the roster, though Open Standard did not detail how binding each commitment is or which networks Open USD will support at launch.

Tied together, these six threads describe a stablecoin market reorganizing around open, revenue-sharing infrastructure just as the rest of crypto trades in fear. COINOTAG’s aggregate market data shows the Fear and Greed Index at 15 of 100, deep in Extreme Fear, with Bitcoin dominance at 69.7% and total crypto market capitalization near $1.68 trillion as of this writing — a defensive, capital-concentrated tape. The contrast is instructive: while speculative altcoin appetite is thin, payments-grade stablecoin infrastructure is attracting blue-chip commitment. Our read is that the unresolved questions — reserve disclosure, supported chains and the durability of zero-fee economics — will determine whether Open USD becomes settlement plumbing or another announced network that stalls before scale.