Circle shares fall 16% as Open Standard unveils rival stablecoin backed by Visa, Stripe, and Coinbase

Circle has had better days. Shares of Circle Internet Group fell more than 16% after a new consortium called Open Standard announced Open USD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by over 140 partners including Visa, Stripe, Coinbase, and BlackRock. The market read the room quickly: this is not a scrappy startup threatening USDC. It is a coalition of the industry’s biggest names.

The announcement came on June 30, 2026, with the actual launch of Open USD, or OUSD, expected later in the year.

What Open Standard is actually building

The core pitch behind OUSD is straightforward: zero fees for minting and redeeming, no artificial caps on transaction volume, and a revenue-sharing model that sends nearly all earnings from U.S. Treasury reserves back to partner firms after a nominal management fee.

Compare that to how Circle operates today. USDC generates revenue largely by keeping the yield on the reserves backing it. OUSD flips that logic by distributing most of those earnings to the network of partners who drive adoption and volume.

Governance follows the same logic. A board composed of partner representatives, rather than a single issuer, will oversee OUSD. With 140-plus partners involved, that is a significantly wider coalition than anything USDC currently offers.

OUSD is also designed to operate across multiple blockchain networks from the start, including Solana, Stellar, Base, and Polygon.

Why Circle felt the pain immediately

USDC and Tether’s USDT currently dominate the stablecoin market. USDC in particular has carved out a reputation as the “clean” institutional stablecoin. That positioning just got significantly more crowded.

Circle’s business model depends on earning yield on the reserves backing USDC. If OUSD captures a meaningful chunk of stablecoin volume by offering zero fees and sharing yield with partners, those partners have a financial incentive to route activity toward OUSD rather than USDC. Coinbase, notably, is both a major USDC distribution partner for Circle and now a backer of OUSD.

Stripe and Visa joining the consortium adds a different dimension. These are companies with massive payment infrastructure and merchant relationships. BlackRock’s involvement rounds out the financial credibility argument, with the world’s largest asset manager backing the stablecoin.

What this means for the stablecoin market

For Circle specifically, the timing is uncomfortable. The company has been working toward a public offering, and a 16% single-day share drop tied to a direct competitive threat is exactly the kind of headline that makes institutional investors nervous about the durability of the underlying business model.

For the broader stablecoin market, OUSD’s zero-fee structure and revenue sharing could put pressure on every issuer to rethink their economics. If users and partners can earn yield by holding and distributing OUSD rather than paying fees to use USDC, the value proposition of fee-based stablecoin models weakens.

With Coinbase, Stripe, and Visa at the table, OUSD has a head start on distribution that most new stablecoin projects would take years to build.

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