The Open USD stablecoin is now live. Open Standard switched on OUSD on Wednesday, September 30, across Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, with Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa as its five founding partners and more than $1 billion pledged to seed supply.
Open Standard announced the launch on X. Businesses can start minting and redeeming OUSD at a 1:1 rate against the dollar, at no cost, through Stripe, Mastercard-owned BVNK and the Visa Stablecoin Platform. Coinbase access begins on October 1. Trading is available from day one on Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap.
Who is behind it and who holds the reserves
OUSD is issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe bought for $1.1 billion in 2024. Bridge's co-founder, Zach Abrams, now runs Open Standard as CEO. Reserves sit at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY, and Bridge says it will publish reserve attestations every month.
The five founders each hold an equal starting equity stake and are, for now, the only investors. Open Standard says it put up more than $1 billion to seed liquidity, with the money arriving over the coming months. The wider network is bigger than the founding group. Open Standard counts over 200 partners, up from about 140 when the project was unveiled on June 30. Outside reports have named Google, BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered and American Express among the participants.
What the Open USD stablecoin actually changes
Most stablecoin issuers earn money from the interest on the reserves behind the token and keep it. Open Standard wants to hand that economics back to the companies that bring in volume. Partners earn rewards, and a chance at equity, in proportion to the supply and activity they drive. Abrams has said the large majority of the cap table is meant to flow back to partners over time.
There are no minting or redemption fees and no artificial volume caps. On Stripe, businesses can hold OUSD in Treasury, spend it through stablecoin cards issued via Stripe Issuing, and send it to crypto wallets in more than 100 countries. Stripe's Will Gaybrick has said OUSD will become Stripe's default stablecoin for businesses. Stripe is not forcing anyone to convert existing stablecoin balances. Ramp, one of the partners, plans to let its customers hold OUSD and earn rewards through Stripe-powered accounts.
The market it is walking into
The stablecoin market is worth more than $300 billion and is dominated by Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, with USDC at roughly $73 to $74 billion in circulation. When OUSD was first announced in late June, Circle's shares fell about 18% in a single day. Analysts at Clear Street called that selloff overdone and compared OUSD to the Global Dollar Network's USDG, which has not won meaningful share. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire pointed to the "massive scale" of the USDC network.
The backers themselves are not burning bridges. Executives at Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase have said they will keep supporting several stablecoins, USDC included.
Bitnxt's view
Our read is simple. This launch is less about a new token and more about who gets paid for moving digital dollars. For years, the issuer kept the reserve income and everyone else did the distribution work. OUSD flips that, and it is a smart pitch to payment companies, fintechs and exchanges that have been sending that income to someone else.
That said, a launch day is not adoption. Having Visa, Stripe and Coinbase on the cap table helps with trust and distribution, but a stablecoin earns its place through liquidity, and USDC and USDT have years of it. The $1 billion pledge is a good start, though it is not the same as organic demand.
The Coinbase angle is the one we would watch most closely. It has a stake in OUSD while also being a major distribution partner for USDC. How a company behaves when it backs two horses at once will tell us more about OUSD's real prospects than any press release will.
One more thing worth saying plainly. Five very large companies sit at the center of this, and the governance and yield-sharing details will matter as the network grows. Anyone using OUSD for business payments should read the reserve attestations when they appear, not just the partner list.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice.
