Visa / Mastercard-led consortium of 140+ launches Open USD — reserve yield goes to the network, not the issuer
TL;DR
Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, Google and 140+ companies launched the Open Standard consortium on June 30 to issue Open USD later this year — reserve yield goes to network distributors, not to the issuer.
Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, Google, BNY, Ripple, Western Union and more than 140 companies across payments, banking, fintech and crypto jointly announced the Open Standard consortium on June 30 to issue the US-dollar stablecoin Open USD (OUSD), going live later this year.
The difference sits in how reserve yield is split. Circle's USDC and Tether's USDT collect customer deposits, park them in Treasuries, and keep the interest — Circle booked $1.7B in net income from this line in FY2024; Tether cleared closer to $13B. Open USD flips it: after a small management fee, the vast majority of reserve income flows back to the network partners who actually distribute and settle the token. Zero mint / redemption fees, no volume caps — the moat Circle built on API and mint pricing gets flattened.
Governance sits with a neutral independent org run collectively by member companies, sidestepping Tether's single-issuer opacity and Circle's single-point risk. Open Standard CEO Zach Abrams: «Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at scale, businesses need something that's open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned to their interests.» BlackRock global head of market development Samara Cohen called Open USD «a constructive step toward giving businesses more choice in how they access tokenized value». Mastercard chief product officer Jorn Lambert said «Open Standard is an effort to help build that foundation».
The signatory list covers the payment big four (Visa / Mastercard / American Express / Discover), four cross-border banks (BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, U.S. Bank), tech and retail via Google / IBM / Shopify, plus crypto-side Coinbase, Ripple, MetaMask, Aave, Bybit, OKX, Galaxy, Fireblocks and Anchorage Digital.
If it works, 140 distributors push Open USD into their payment terminals and wallets and cut Tether's ~$13B/year Treasury spread back to themselves — stablecoin economics move from «two issuers eat it all» to «network splits it». If it doesn't, Tether's $160B circulating float and real-world USDT settlement rails hold, and Open USD ends up as another consortium project everyone quietly co-funded.
via The Block / crypto.news / Crypto Briefing / U.S. News
The difference sits in how reserve yield is split. Circle's USDC and Tether's USDT collect customer deposits, park them in Treasuries, and keep the interest — Circle booked $1.7B in net income from this line in FY2024; Tether cleared closer to $13B. Open USD flips it: after a small management fee, the vast majority of reserve income flows back to the network partners who actually distribute and settle the token. Zero mint / redemption fees, no volume caps — the moat Circle built on API and mint pricing gets flattened.
Governance sits with a neutral independent org run collectively by member companies, sidestepping Tether's single-issuer opacity and Circle's single-point risk. Open Standard CEO Zach Abrams: «Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at scale, businesses need something that's open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned to their interests.» BlackRock global head of market development Samara Cohen called Open USD «a constructive step toward giving businesses more choice in how they access tokenized value». Mastercard chief product officer Jorn Lambert said «Open Standard is an effort to help build that foundation».
The signatory list covers the payment big four (Visa / Mastercard / American Express / Discover), four cross-border banks (BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, U.S. Bank), tech and retail via Google / IBM / Shopify, plus crypto-side Coinbase, Ripple, MetaMask, Aave, Bybit, OKX, Galaxy, Fireblocks and Anchorage Digital.
If it works, 140 distributors push Open USD into their payment terminals and wallets and cut Tether's ~$13B/year Treasury spread back to themselves — stablecoin economics move from «two issuers eat it all» to «network splits it». If it doesn't, Tether's $160B circulating float and real-world USDT settlement rails hold, and Open USD ends up as another consortium project everyone quietly co-funded.
via The Block / crypto.news / Crypto Briefing / U.S. News