Circle Renews With Coinbase — Then a 140-Partner Consortium Targets the Reserve Income That Deal Rests On

A day after Circle renewed its USDC distribution deal with Coinbase (August 5), CoinShares flagged the Open USD consortium — 140+ firms including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock and Coinbase itself — as a structural threat to Circle's economics. Circle earns almost all its revenue ($667.7M last quarter, 95% of the total) from interest on USDC's reserves; Open USD proposes redistributing that yield to distribution partners instead. Mizuho has cut Circle to underperform; the consortium isn't yet live, and a similar Paxos model drew only ~$3B in 18 months.