A consortium of more than 140 founding firms unveiled Open USD on June 30, pitching the stablecoin as a shared-governance alternative to USDC. Circle shares closed down more than 17%, below $63, their weakest level since late February.
The consortium, called Open Standard, includes payment networks, banks, technology companies, commerce firms, and crypto platforms. Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, and Adyen are listed among payment partners. BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, and U.S. Bank are in the financial group. Google, Samsung, IBM, Shopify, and DoorDash are listed on the technology and commerce side. Coinbase, Ripple, Solana, Aave, MetaMask, and Polygon are among the crypto participants.
Zach Abrams, co-founder of Bridge, which Stripe acquired in 2024, is CEO of Open Standard. "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," he said.
Open USD's main contrast with USDC is governance and economics. It has no mint or redeem fees, no issuance caps, and routes reserve income from Treasury holdings back to partners after a management fee. Governance sits with an independent board drawn from member firms, modeled on Visa and Mastercard's network structures, with no single entity controlling issuance.
Circle's exposure is most direct through distribution. Coinbase and Stripe, two of USDC's largest enterprise partners, are founding members of Open Standard. CRCL had already fallen 55% from its mid-May peak before Tuesday's close.
Open USD will launch natively on Solana from day one, with expansion to Tempo and other Layer-1 networks planned. No exact go-live date has been announced.