OUSD False Cooperation Controversy? The Credit Game of Stablecoins and Endorsements by Giants

Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher

Last week, Open Standard launched the dollar-pegged stablecoin OpenUSD (OUSD) and showcased a powerful lineup, with over 140 companies standing together, from Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, American Express, to BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, and then to Google, Shopify, Samsung, Coinbase, Solana, Ripple. As soon as the news broke, Circle's stock price fell that day, but just a few days later, this glamorous list began to show cracks.

Several Korean Companies Distancing Themselves

OUSD is led by Zach Abrams, co-founder of Bridge (which was acquired by Stripe in 2024), focusing on three aspects that differ from existing stablecoins: zero fees for minting and redemption, no trading volume limits, and returning most of the profits generated from reserve assets to partners promoting adoption, rather than being monopolized by the issuer. In governance, it does not have a single controlling entity but is instead governed by a board composed of partners making collective decisions, resembling payment networks like Visa and Mastercard, with plans to launch first on Solana, Polygon, Aptos, and Stellar.

However, according to a report by South Korean media outlet Chosun Biz on July 3, several of the 13 Korean companies on the list have distanced themselves. Samsung Electronics stated that there had been no formal negotiations, and the company was even unclear about what role it was supposed to play in the alliance. New Korea Financial Group, Dunamu (the parent company of Upbit), and K Bank expressed nearly identical sentiments: Open Standard only asked if they were willing to participate, and their response was merely "we will evaluate," yet their names appeared directly on the official member list. Even more awkwardly, some companies stated they only discovered they were listed through local news, and their initial response was simply "we will consider it if everything goes smoothly," feeling astonished at being included in the alliance.

This wave of skepticism is not limited to Korea. Gabor Gurbacs, founder of OpenAssets in the U.S., mentioned that several clients on the list told him they had never signed or agreed to anything, and he could only speculate that "either the media has severely distorted the facts, or this participant list is misleading." Objectively speaking, this list is not entirely fictional; companies like Mastercard, Stripe, Visa, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY, and Adyen indeed have executives endorsing it, and Stripe even stated it would make OUSD the default stablecoin for its platform merchants.

The real controversy lies in OUSD's model of sharing reserve profits, as being listed as a partner implies enjoying economic rights, which makes the question of formal participation not just a public relations issue but a tangible business and credibility concern.

Reputation Built on Marketing Inertia, Past "All-Star Alliances" Have Fallen from Grace

Using the reputations of giants to build momentum is a long-standing marketing inertia in the crypto industry.

Chainstory analyzed nearly 3,000 crypto press releases from the second half of 2025, finding that high-risk projects accounted for 35.6% of all published projects, while projects marked as scams accounted for 26.9%. These suspicious categories combined accounted for over 62% of the total press releases. Meanwhile, low-risk projects only made up about 27% of the total press releases.

To discuss how the "All-Star Alliance" fell from grace, the most classic and fitting comparison is Facebook's Libra.

In the summer of 2019, Facebook boldly announced its intention to issue the stablecoin Libra with a white paper, boasting an unprecedentedly luxurious lineup: on the payment side, there were Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe; in e-commerce, eBay and Shopify; in the crypto space, Coinbase; even top venture capital firms like a16z were included. Almost half of Silicon Valley was rallying behind it.

Later, a congressional hearing turned the tide. Governments around the world were concerned about the impact on sovereign currencies and the dollar's status, with France being the first to oppose, while the U.S. Congress relentlessly pursued Facebook over its past privacy and data scandals, questioning "why this company should be doing this." Regulatory pressure quickly spread to allies. On October 4, 2019, PayPal was the first to withdraw; just a week later, Stripe, Visa, eBay, and Mastercard collectively exited. All of this happened just days before the first council meeting of Libra, which hadn't even convened yet, and the entire group was on the verge of disbanding.

The subsequent story was a series of desperate measures: renaming to Diem, moving the headquarters from Switzerland back to the U.S., pegging the currency value solely to the dollar, and operating independently from Facebook, with key figures gradually departing. By 2022, the entire project was sold to Silvergate for about $200 million, marking its official end.

The lesson from Libra is not that the coin issuance strategy was wrong, but rather that an impressive alliance list does not equate to a functional product, nor does it guarantee established real channels. Coincidentally, the Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe that abandoned Libra back then are now the marquee names on the OUSD list. Whether the same group of giants will have a different story with a new alliance remains to be seen.

Circle CEO Welcomes Competition with Open Arms

In the face of OUSD's aggressive entry, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that he welcomes competition and directly pointed out the essence of this business in his view: the stablecoin network is a business of platforms and network effects, where the market structure tends toward winner-takes-all, and building such a network takes a long time.

According to data from The Block's dashboard, the total market capitalization of stablecoins pegged to the dollar has exceeded $291 billion, with Tether's USDT accounting for about $184.3 billion, while Circle's USDC exceeds $73 billion.

Additionally, regarding OUSD's "free minting and redemption" selling point, he believes that market realities often force project parties to adjust their practices, and Circle relies on contractual mechanisms rather than a blanket free approach. On the "everyone shares" model, he bluntly stated that distributing all income equals "starving the infrastructure," leading to systemic underinvestment, preventing the platform from growing significantly.

He also shared his views on the "alliance model." Allaire believes that alliance-type products have historically performed poorly in achieving scalability, product-market fit, and even basic agility, stating, "A large group of big companies coming together often results in poor coordination, misaligned incentives, slow progress, and each having their own interests starving the alliance itself." He has also observed that when such alliances are formed, everyone is eager to put their logos on the list, stand on stage, and loudly proclaim openness, but when it comes down to it, each company's business departments will still make the best decisions for their customers.

According to statistics from the third-party agency Artemis, as of July 2026, the total supply of dollar-pegged stablecoins is about $300 billion, with USDT around $180 billion and USDC about $78 billion, together accounting for nearly 90%; all new stablecoins combined amount to about $40 billion, just a small sliver at the bottom of the stack. Allaire believes that many stablecoins may have circulation, but most of it comes from promotions and incentives, with real usage being extremely limited, as liquidity and network utility cannot support it.

Conclusion

It can be said that the success of stablecoins does not rely on rallying a group of alliance members to help with marketing, but rather on whether there are real use cases and genuine users, including specific scenarios like B2B payments, merchant settlements, and cross-border payroll.

However, we cannot yet determine the final outcome of OUSD; it indeed has the backing of substantial giants and a product model that differs from the existing market structure, which may not necessarily follow the same path as Libra. This turmoil has revealed a recurring issue in the crypto industry: giant alliances can give a project impressive momentum before launch, but the status of USDT and USDC is built on the real application scenarios of exchanges, DeFi, payments, and cross-border traffic. Before that, is OUSD merely issuing empty checks to the market? The market will provide its own answer.