Tether made roughly 10 billion dollars in 2025 by doing one thing holding your dollars in Treasury bills and keeping the intreset. , On September 30, 2026, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase and Shopify launched a stablecoin designed to make that business model look greedy.... Open USD, ticker OUSD, hands most of its reserve income back to the companies that put it in circulation. six days later, as of October 6, 2026, the token already has 698..8 million dollars in supply, and the two incumbents that controle 88 percent of the stablecoin market suddenly have to explain why they deserve the float.
What Is Open USD and Who Actually Issues It
OUSD is a dollar stablecoin governed by Open Standard, a company run by Zach Abrams. The token itself is minted by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe bought for 1....1 billion dollars in 2024.. reserves sit at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY Mellon. , Bridge has promised monthley attestations and publishes real time supply and reserve figures on Bridge's live OUSD reserve dashboard.... On October 3 that dashboard showed 666.2 million dollars in reserves against 666.2 million OUSD outstanding, split 88.3 percent into money market funds running Treasury ladders under three months and 11.7 percent into cash deposits.
The five founding partners each hold an equal initial equity stake and committed more than 1 billion dollars in near term lauch liquidity...... Note the wording. That billion was a commitment, not a mint... actual circulation hit 470 million dollars within two hours of launch, 668....5 million by October 2, dipped slightly to 666.3 million by October 5, and now sits just under 700 million. It is the fastest stablecoin launch in the markets history and still a rounding errro next to USDT.
Around those five founders sits a partner network that grew from 140 companies at the June announcement to more than 200 at launch. The roster includes UBS, SBI Holdings, American Express, Discover, Google, IBM, Standard Chartered, OKX, Bybit, MetaMask, Ripple and Galaxy. Chainlink is the official data oracle. Minting and redeeming is free, one to one, with no volume limits, trough Stripe, Mastercards BVNK, the Visa Stablecoin Platform and, since October 1, Coinbase. Trading went live on Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap on day one.
How OUSD Revenue Sharing Works
Here is the part that moved Circles share price 13 percent in a single session when the model was first announced. Every dollar stablecoin earns intreset on its reserves. Tether keeps all of it. , Circle keeps some and pays the rest out as distribution costs, mostly to Coinbase. , Open Standard says it returns almost all of the reserve income, minus a small management fee, to the partners who hold or distribute the supply, in proportion to the OUSD they bring onto the network.
Two details mattre. First, founding partners get no preferential revenue share. Visa earns on the OUSD flowing through Visa, Shopify earns on the OUSD held by Shopify merchants, and a 50 person fintech that joins tomorrow earns on exactly the same terms. Second, equity in Open Standard itself is designed to leak out. Abrams has said the overwhelming majority of the companys cap table will be distributed over the next four to five years to founders and non founders alike, based on how much supply and transacion activity each one drives.
Abrams summarized the pitch in one line: Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We are building money. , Translated out of founder speak: USDT and USDC are products whose profits accrue to a single issuer..... OUSD is meant to behave like a shared rail where the people who use it are the people who get paid. Plus,
| Stablecoin | Issuer | Supply (Oct 2026) | Who keeps the reserve yield | Mint and redeem fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USDT | Tether | ~183 billion | Tether keeps 100 percent (about 10 billion profit in 2025) | Fees and 100,000 dollar minimim for direct redemption |
| USDC | Circle | ~74 billion | Circle, with Coinbase taking 100 percent on USDC held on Coinbase and 50 percent of the rest | Free for institutional Circle Mint customers |
| OUSD | Bridge (Stripe) for Open Standard | ~699 million | Partners who distribute the supply, minus a small mangemnet fee | Free, one to one, no volume limits |
Why Coinbase Backing a USDC Rival Is the Real Story
Coinbase is the second largest beneficiary of USDC on the planet and a founding owner of the token built to undercut it. Both things are true at the same time, and nobody at Coinbase seems embarrassed about it. The exchange now profits whichever stablecoin wins, and it has a direct finacial reason to nudge payment flows toward the one where it holds equity. visa is in the same position: it spent two years building USDC settlement and now owns a slice of a revenue sharing alternative. To be fair, This is why the consensus among analysts is that USDC, not USDT, faces the real pressure.. OUSD is aimed at the exact customer base that chose USDC in the first place regulatd US businesses, payment processors, treasury desks and card programs.... Tethers dominance comes from offshore crypto trading and emerging market dollar demand, and none of OUSDs launch partners touch that world...... Tethers own regulated US token, USAT, had just 183 million dollars in circulation on October 2, which tells you how little the company has invested in the fight OUSD is picking.Where the 699 Million OUSD Actualy Lives
OUSD launched natively on four chains, and the distribution is lopsided in a way that reveals who is doing the minting.
| Network | OUSD supply (Oct 5, 2026) | Share | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 472.8 million | 71 percent | Stripe and Paradigms payments chain, Stripe products default to it |
| Solana | 68.0 million | 10 percent | Retail and exchange liquidity, up from 18 million on lauch day |
| Base | 65.0 million | 10 percent | Coinbases own L2, Coinbase on ramp opened October 1 |
| Ethereum | 60.5 million | 9 percent | DeFi and Uniswap pairs |
Technically, seventy one percent on Tempo is the tell. Tempo is the Layer 1 Stripe built with Paradigm, live on mainnet since March 18, 2026, runnng Reth with Simplex consensus for roughly 0.6 second finality and no native gas token. Fees are paid in stablecoins. Stripe, Visa and Zodia Custody were its first external validators. So the bulk of OUSD is sitting on a chain controlled by the same company that issues the token, minted by Stripes own treasury and payout products. That is not organic demand yet. It is Stripe moving its own plumbing onto its own coin.
The other 29 percent is more intersting because it is where actual third parties show up. Solana went from 18 million OUSD across 47 wallets on launch evening to 68 million within five days.. Base and Ethereum followed similar curves..... Compare that to USDC on Solana, which sits around 7.9 billion, and the gap between backed by 200 companies and used by 200 companies becomes obviosu.
The Case Against Open USD
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire did not bother being polite. He argued that constant free issuance and redemption of tokens without restrictions could be burdensome for large scale infrastructure, and that giving away the reserve income leaves nothing to fund security, compliance and operations. Bernstein estimates Circle spends about 500 million dollars a year on excatly those things. if OUSD keeps only a small management fee, someone still has to pay for the lawyers.
Bernsteins own analysts flagged that it is still unclear how management will be structured, who is responsible for operations, how income from reserves will be distributed.... ARK Invests Lorenzo Valente called the project more of a major letter of intent than a ready competitor, pointing out that many of the 200 partners allready support rival stablecoins or are building their own.. Ripple is on the OUSD partner list while pushing RLUSD. MetaMask is on it while issuing mUSD through the same Bridge platform. being a partner costs nothing and commits to nothing. On top of that, Then there is Europe. Open Standard has not filed for MiCA registration, which requires more than 40 workng days notice before a token can be offered in the EU. No EU regulated exchange listed OUSD at launch. Worse for the whole revenue sharing thesis, MiCA Article 50 prohibits paying interest on e money tokens.... And a model built on passing reserve yield to distributors is going to get a very careful read from European supervisors. our analysis is that OUSDs structre fits the US GENIUS Act framework cleanly and the EU framework badly. Which means the Tether shaped hole in Europe stays open for Circle a while longer.
Actually, smaller problems pile on.. The ticker collides with Origin Dollar, a DeFi token that has used OUSD since 2020. Monthly attestations are promised but, as of launch week, only a dashboard exists with no accountant sign off. , And the billion dollar headline that every outlet repeated was a liquidity commitmnt, not money in reserve.
Why Crypto Casino Players Should Care at All
Nobody on the OUSD partner list runs a casino, and the token is not accepted at a single gambling site we could find.... The honest answer is that this launch matters to players for a second order reason: it is the first stablecoin where holding float is explicitly rewarded.... Crypto casinos sit on large stablecoin balances by deisgn. Player deposits, bonus pools and hot wallets are all idle dollars that, under USDT, earn Tether money and earn the casino nothing. Under the OUSD model, a platform that drove meaningful supply would collect the yield itself..... If that incentive does not get an operators attention, nothing will.
The counterweight is distribution... Players use USDT on Tron becuase it is everywhere, fees are under a cent, and every exchange on earth will take it. OUSD has four chains, three exchanges and no presence in the markets where most crypto gambling actually happens. Payment stablecoins get adopted at casinos when players already hold them, not when a consortium announces them. CryptoCasino.Vegas added networks like Solana and Lightning on excatly that basis, after players showed up holding the asset, and OUSD will go through the same test. Visas own data points the right direction, with stablecoin linked card volume up roughly 200 percent year over year across 160 programs, but cards are where OUSD will reach consumers first... Casino cashiers come later, if at all.
What to Watch Next
Hand on heart, three signals will tell you wheather OUSD is a real contender or an expensive press release.... First, the Tempo share. If it drops below 50 percent while total supply keeps growing, third parties are minting and the network effect is real. If it stays above 70 percent, this is Stripe talking to itself. Second, the first formal attestation..... A monthly report from a named accounting firm, not a dashboard, is the minimun bar for a token that wants to settle Visa transactions. Third, the first big defector. The day Coinbase defaults a product to OUSD instead of USDC, or Visa settles a merchant program in OUSD rather than USDC, Circles 74 billion starts to move.
Until then, treat OUSD as a well funded argument about who deserves the interest on your dollars. For once, the arguement is being made by the people with the distribution to win it. Tethers 10 billion a year has never looked more like a target.
