On this edition of Strata Research, our Founder Jacquelyn Melinek sits down with our Institutional Research Analyst Alexander Beaudry to dig into the OUSD announcement that resulted in Circle's stock dropping and had the crypto world convinced a new stablecoin competitor had arrived.

After looking into the details, Alex argues this is just Stripe's stablecoin wrapped in a consortium for competitive cover, then he walks through why the 140 company list is largely a marketing move before getting into which of the two paths to success for OUSD he actually thinks will play out.

To hear the conversation, watch the full episode on Youtube, Spotify, or AppleMusic.

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When Open Standard unveiled its upcoming stablecoin, OUSD, late last month, it touted the support of 140 firms from around the world, naming industry giants like Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Shopify, Ripple and Coinbase.

But of all the partners listed in its announcement, Open Standard didn't say which are helping it actually build and operate the stablecoin’s infrastructure, or even which had signed agreements. The organization only says that they’ve agreed to use the stablecoin upon launch. 

In fact, only one appears to be running the stablecoin itself: Stripe.

OUSD will be minted by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe bought for about $1.1 billion in February 2025. Bridge will build and redeem the token, and will handle the banking connections behind it. 

Onboarding will be run through Privy, an embedded-wallet company Stripe also acquired in June 2025. 

Lastly, the founding CEO of Open Standard is Zach Abrams, who’s also the founder and CEO of Bridge. 

In a nutshell, it appears issuance, onboarding, and leadership will all be ultimately influenced by Stripe.

Then there is the stablecoin’s distribution. Stripe's president of technology and business, Will Gaybrick, wrote that "OpenUSD will be the default stablecoin for businesses running on Stripe." 

To date, Stripe is the only company to make OUSD its default stablecoin. 

So why wrap it in 140 logos and a partner board? Two reasons: 

Open Standard describes "a board made up of OpenUSD's partners" and "its own independent management team," but is yet to describe voting rights, tie-break processes, decision making structures or thresholds. 

Additionally, the management fee that determines how much reserve income Open Standard keeps is described only as "small." 

Open Standard claims it will be “governed collaboratively,” with an independent management team. That ambiguity has understandably sparked some confusion about just how many of the named partners would be involved in the organizations.

The press release listed 13 Korean entities, including Samsung Electronics, Shinhan Financial Group, Dunamu (which operates Upbit, Korea's largest crypto exchange), K Bank, and a cluster of card issuers. But several of these flatly denied they had signed an agreement. 

A Samsung official said, "There were no official consultations, and we do not even know what role we would play." Shinhan, Dunamu, and K Bank reportedly said they had been approached about OUSD, and had replied only that they would review the matter. They were named anyway. 

While Open Standard is ambiguous about exactly who signed an agreement and who simply indicated an interest in the project, there are real benefits to be gained from being involved. If OUSD proves to be a success, any partners with a seat on the governance board would be able to guide how the stablecoin is developed. Depending on the nature of the agreement, if OUSD sputters out, any partners would face little financial risk. Either way, a partner would gain a hedge against Tether and Circle, and some free co-branding. 

Two such partners that have nothing to lose are Ripple and Coinbase.

Ripple operates its own stablecoin, RLUSD, which currently has a market capitalization of $1.46 billion, the eighth-largest in the market, behind PYUSD. As of May 2026, Ripple’s reserves for RLUSD exceeded its supply, ending the month at $1.77 billion, the majority of which ($1.16 billion) were held in the form of U.S Treasury bonds. 

At first, Ripple’s endorsement of OUSD seems odd since the upcoming stablecoin could threaten RLUSD’s hold on the market. But the endorsement does not mean that Ripple needs to move traffic away from RLUSD. It’s far likelier that Ripple will continue business as usual, and simply accept OUSD as another form of payment. 

And Coinbase has little incentive to make OUSD its preferred stablecoin. In 2025, the company earned $1.66 billion from USDC’s Treasury yield alone. USDC is the preferred stablecoin on Coinbase, with a quarter of its supply living on the exchange, and is integrated into all of its lending, payments and pricing infrastructure. Replacing USDC with another stablecoin would be costly, introduce unnecessary risk, and may disrupt the entire crypto market.

Currently, the exchange lists a variety of stablecoins for sale, including USDS, AUSD, and USDG, so it’s likely that OUSD will simply be another stablecoin listed alongside these assets.

Circle's is almost entirely a reserve-income business. In 2025, the company reported about $2.7 billion in revenue, roughly 99 percent of which came from interest earned on the Treasuries and cash backing USDC. 

However, of the roughly $1.6 billion in total distribution costs that year, about $1.4 billion went to Coinbase.

Under the two companies’ agreement from 2023, Coinbase receives 100 percent of the reserve income on USDC held on its own platform, and 50 percent of the reserve income on USDC held anywhere else. 

Coinbase also holds equity in Circle, and USDC is wired through Coinbase's products. The deal is so good, and USDC’s integration is so deep, that Coinbase would likely never walk away. To date, there is no other stablecoin issuer that would willing or have the capacity to offer a better deal.

So why did Circle’s stock drop 17 percent following Open Standard’s announcement?

The stablecoin issuer’s distribution agreement with Coinbase took effect in August 2023 on an initial three-year term, which means its renewal window is coming up next month. By openly endorsing Open Standard, Coinbase may be looking to create leverage ahead of renewal negotiations with Circle. 

Additionally, potential network effects could lead OUSD partners to move volume away from USDC, further reducing its market share, which has been dropping since April 2026.

When it comes to OUSD’s path to success, two avenues seem likely.

Stripe can make OUSD the default for merchant payouts, cross-border settlement, and money movement across its platform. In 2025, the payments giant handled $1.9 trillion in volume across 1.5 million websites. If Stripe can route just 5 percent of that volume through OUSD, it would easily catapult the stablecoin into the top 10 (by trading volume), behind RLUSD. 

If Stripe can successfully integrate OUSD across its business, the stablecoin could end up rivaling incumbents like USDG and PYUSD in terms of volume.

The second avenue involves OUSD finding a fit as a market stablecoin that’s held and traded alongside USDC and USDT. 

Here, the path is more difficult, and runs into a marketing and demand-side problem. Zero-cost minting and shared reserve yield are incentives aimed at businesses that issue and distribute the coin. They give a payment company a reason to offer OUSD, but don’t give regular users, trading desks, or DeFi protocols a real reason to hold it. 

To create such incentives, OUSD must integrate with a variety of DeFi protocols and exchanges, but such partnerships can take months or years to set up. The road to success on the open market isn’t impossible, but it will take time and much more work to accomplish.

We can look to coins built on similar shared-yield ideas for a view of how this could play out. Paxos' Global Dollar (USDG), which returns reserve yield to a network of partners, has reached roughly $3 billion in circulation. If a partner-yield coin can reach $3 billion, a partner-yield coin wired into Stripe's network has a good chance of exceeding it.

Is OUSD a “USDC killer?” Probably not. Will it be run by a neutral consortium of 140 companies? Unlikely.

Still, Open Standard does have implications for the broader stablecoin market. OUSD will introduce real competition into the market. For issuers that charge fees on minting and burning, OUSD will cut into their business directly by offering a cheaper product backed by a payments giant. 

For USDC, OUSD will almost certainly not prove a danger anytime soon, but its presence nevertheless introduces complexities for continued, long-term growth.

Stripe’s distribution infrastructure and reach will give OUSD a real advantage in reaching merchants across the world. And if the company’s bid to buy PayPal goes through, it could bend the latter’s sweeping presence in the consumer market to OUSD’s benefit, as well as find ways to help it work with PYUSD. 

Combine this with other partners like Visa (which just launched a stablecoin platform to give access to OpenUSD), MasterCard, Ramp, Ripple and Coinbase, OUSD stands a good chance of becoming a top ten stablecoin in terms of trading volume.

Stripe and Open Standard did not return requests for comment.