Whose stablecoin will stand on the platform? What does OUSD's “fake collaboration” storm explain?
By Chloe, ChainCatcher
Original title: OUSD fake cooperation storm? A credit game endorsed by stablecoins and giants
Last week, Open Standard launched the US dollar stablecoin OpenUSD (OUSD) and revealed a strong lineup with more than 140 companies standing at the same time, from Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, American Express, BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, to Google, Shopify, Samsung, Coinbase, Solana, and Ripple. As soon as the news came out, Circle's stock price fell on the same day, but in just a few days, this gorgeous list began to crack.
A number of Korean companies came forward to cut
Led by Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams (Bridge was acquired by Stripe in 2024), OUSD focuses on three things that are different from existing stablecoins: zero fees for minting and redemption, no maximum transaction volume, and returning most of the proceeds from reserve assets to partners driving adoption, rather than being left to issuers alone. In terms of governance, it does not have a single controller; instead, partners form a board of directors to make collective decisions. The structure is more like payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard, and plans to launch on the four chains of Solana, Polygon, Aptos, and Stellar first.
However, according to a report by the Korean media “North Korea Biz” on July 3, many of the 13 Korean companies on the list came forward to cut. Samsung Electronics said that there have been no formal negotiations between the two sides, and the company doesn't even know what role it wants to play in the alliance. Shinhan Financial Group, Upbit's parent company Dunamu, and K Bank are almost the same: Open Standard only asked “if they are willing to participate,” and their responses were simply “I will evaluate and see,” but the names appeared directly on the official member list. What is even more embarrassing is that some companies said that they only discovered that they were listed through local news. Their initial response was only “I will consider it if everything goes well,” and they are amazed that it was written into the alliance.
This question is not limited to South Korea either. Gabor Gurbacs, founder of US OpenAssets, said that several of his clients on the list told him that they had never signed or agreed to anything, and could only speculate that “either the media is seriously distorted, or that this list of participants is misleading.” Objectively speaking, this list is not entirely fictional. Companies such as Mastercard, Stripe, Visa, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY, and Adyen do indeed have executive endorsements, and Stripe has even stated that it wants OUSD to become the default stablecoin for its platform merchants.
The real controversy is that OUSD's model is to share reserve profits, and being listed as a partner is tantamount to enjoying financial benefits. This makes whether or not to participate officially no longer just a matter of PR copywriting, but a real business and reputation issue.
Fame is built up into marketing inertia, and in the past, “All Star League” also fell from heaven
Using the fame of giants to stack their momentum is a long-standing marketing inertia in the crypto industry.
Chainstory analyzed nearly 3,000 crypto press releases in the second half of 2025. Projects rated as high risk accounted for 35.6% of all published projects, and 26.9% of projects flagged as scams. Together, these questionable categories account for more than 62% of the total number of press releases. Meanwhile, low-risk projects only account for about 27% of the total number of press releases.
If you want to talk about how the “All-Star League” fell from heaven, the most classic and apt counterpoint is Facebook's Libra.
In the summer of 2019, Facebook made a high-profile announcement with a white paper to launch the stablecoin Libra. The lineup was unprecedented: payment terminals include Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe; e-commerce companies include eBay, Shopify, Coinbase in the crypto sector, and even top venture capital such as a16z. Almost half of Silicon Valley is shouting for it.
Later, a congressional hearing changed fate. Governments feared that the status of the sovereign currency and the US dollar would be impacted. France was the first to oppose it, while the US Congress fought hard against Facebook's past privacy and data scandals, questioning “why is this company doing this.” Regulatory pressure quickly spread to allies. On October 4, 2019, PayPal took the lead; Stripe, Visa, eBay, and Mastercard left the market just a week later. However, all of this happened a few days before Libra's first council meeting. Before the first meeting was held, the whole group almost dispersed.
The story that followed was a series of broken arms to survive: changing the name Diem, moving the headquarters back to the US from Switzerland, anchoring a single currency to the US dollar, breaking away from Facebook and operating independently, and the core souls left one after another. By 2022, the entire project sold assets to Silvergate for about $200 million and officially came to an end.
The lesson of Libra is not that the coin issuance strategy is wrong, but that even the most dazzling list of alliances is not equal to a working product, let alone a real channel that is already in place. Coincidentally, Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe, which abandoned Libra back then, are now signs on the OUSD list. If the same group of giants switched alliances, the story would be different, no one knows yet.
Circle CEO welcomes competition with open arms
Facing the menace of OUSD, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said he welcomed competition, and directly pointed out the essence of this business in his eyes: the stablecoin network is a business with platform and network effects. The market structure tends to be winner-take-all, and it takes a long time to build this kind of network.
According to The Block's data dashboard, the total market value of USD-linked stablecoins has exceeded $291 billion, of which Tether's USDT accounts for about $184.3 billion, while Circle's USDC exceeds $73 billion.
Also, in response to OUSD's “free minting and redemption” selling point, he believes that market reality often forces project parties to adjust their practices. Circle relies on a contract mechanism rather than being one-size-fits-all free. Regarding “everyone sharing,” he bluntly stated that splitting out all of the revenue is equivalent to “starving to death infrastructure,” leading to insufficient systematic investment, and the platform will never grow big.
Also, there is his opinion on the “League Model.” Allaire believes that alliance-type products have poor historical records in terms of achieving scale, product market fit, and even basic agility. “A large group of large companies come together, with poor coordination, misplaced incentives, slow progress, and often 'hungry' the alliance itself with selfishness.” He also observed that when such alliances were formed, everyone was in a hurry to put their logo on the list, stand up, and then promote openness in a high-profile manner, but looking back, each business department would still make the best decisions for customers.
According to statistics from Artemis, a third-party agency, as of July 2026, the total supply of US stablecoins is about 300 billion US dollars, USDT is about 180 billion dollars, and USDC is about 78 billion, which together is nearly 90%; all new stablecoins add up to about 40 billion, which is only a small strip at the bottom of the stack chart. Allaire believes that many stablecoins may have circulation, but most of them come from promotion and incentives, and actual usage is extremely limited because neither liquidity nor network utility can support it.
epilogue
It can be said that the success of a stablecoin does not depend on attracting a group of affiliate members to help with marketing, but rather depends on whether it has real usage scenarios and real users, including specific scenarios such as B2B payments, merchant settlement, and cross-border remuneration.
However, we are still unable to determine the final outcome of OUSD. It does have real money giants endorsing it, and it also has a set of product models that are different from the original market pattern, and may not necessarily follow Libra's old path. The only thing that unraveled this storm is a recurring problem in the crypto industry: alliances of giants can make a project stand out before it goes live, but the status of USDT and USDC is based on the stacking of real application scenarios for exchanges, DeFi, payments, and cross-border traffic. Before that, was OUSD just issuing short checks to the market? The market will answer for itself.
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