Open USD Launches; USDC Competitive Dynamics and Circle Revenue Threat Debated

The specific mechanism here is the revenue-sharing model. Open USD promises to pass the earnings from its reserves back to every business that participates — Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, Coinbase, 140 companies in total. That's the knife.

Circle built USDC into a $74 billion asset partly by keeping most of that reserve income itself. The new consortium is essentially saying: the real product isn't the stablecoin, it's the yield, and we're giving it away to buy distribution.

The analysts calling the 17% drop 'overblown' may well be right about Circle surviving. But the price collapse tells you what the market thinks Circle's moat actually was — and it turns out the moat was made of money it was keeping from partners who are now going elsewhere to get it.

Shinhan Bank told Open Standard it would "review" the proposal. An unnamed firm said it might "consider it if things go well." Both ended up listed as founding partners in a 149-member consortium backed, apparently, by Visa and BlackRock.

That's not a partnership list. That's a cold-call log dressed up as a coalition.

The revenue-sharing model may genuinely be interesting. But none of it matters if the 140 firms underpinning the whole pitch haven't actually agreed to anything. A stablecoin's credibility is its backing — and the backing just publicly disowned the project.