Open USD Pays Partners for Usage, Not for Holding. Its Supply Is About 0.3% of Tether and Circle Combined.

Open USD, or OUSD, went live in late September 2026 on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Stripe-backed Tempo. Its pitch is not a better peg or a new reserve mix. It is a different answer to the question of who gets paid when a stablecoin exists. At Tether, the issuer keeps the income earned on the reserves. OUSD's backers say they will instead hand most of the company's equity and rewards to the partners that make the coin used. The idea is coherent. The numbers show how far it still has to go: about $666 million of supply against roughly $217 billion for Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC combined.

Who is behind it and what has launched

The coin is developed by Open Standard, a company led by CEO Zach Abrams, who previously co-founded Bridge. Bridge, a Stripe company that Stripe acquired in 2024 for $1.1 billion according to Crypto Briefing, issues the stablecoin, American Banker reports. CoinDesk's account names Open Standard as issuer, so outlets differ on that detail. Reserves are held with BNY, Lead Bank and BlackRock (American Banker and Crypto Briefing); CoinDesk says the custodians were not disclosed in its piece.

The founding partners, each with an equal initial equity stake, are Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, according to CoinDesk. American Banker lists only Mastercard, Visa, Stripe and Coinbase. The partner count also differs: CoinDesk says the network has grown from more than 140 at the June announcement to more than 200 now, while American Banker says more than 140. Coinbase began taking part in the zero-fee mint and redeem programme on 1 October. The founding group has committed more than $1 billion of liquidity over the coming months, a figure that is a commitment and not a measure of supply.

How the economics differ

Most stablecoin issuers earn money in one way: reserves, usually short-dated Treasury bills and cash, earn interest, and the issuer keeps the spread because holders get no interest. Tether keeps that income. Circle has disclosed revenue-sharing arrangements with distribution partners such as Coinbase, which means the income is shared with a small number of large partners under bilateral contracts. In both models the money comes from reserves and is distributed according to who negotiated a deal.

OUSD's design, as described by CoinDesk, keeps the reserve income but changes how it is shared. Most of the company's equity will be distributed over four to five years to founders and network partners according to how they grow OUSD. Founding partners get no special revenue share and earn under the same framework as other partners, based on the OUSD supply they generate. Partners that pass an undisclosed minimum threshold can earn equity based on supply and transaction activity. Crypto Briefing adds that, after a management fee, reserve earnings go to partners in proportion to the usage each drives. Mint and redeem fees are being eliminated, according to Tempo's chief business officer, Dan Romero. Abrams contrasted the approach with the rest of the market by saying other stablecoins are building a fund while Open Standard is building money.

That is a claim by the company, and the coverage does not say how much of the reserve income reaches holders, what the management fee is, or whether the holder gets any of the yield. The only thing the sources establish is that partners, not a single issuer, are the intended recipients.

A reserve-income comparison the coverage did not make

The Federal Reserve raised its policy range to 3.75% to 4.00% on 16 September (Benzinga). As a rough illustration, if reserves earned that range, $217 billion of USDT and USDC would generate about $8.1 billion to $8.7 billion a year before costs. The same arithmetic applied to OUSD's roughly $666 million of supply gives about $25 million to $27 million a year before the management fee. These are our calculations, and they assume the entire supply is backed by assets earning the policy rate, which no issuer's reserves do exactly.

The point is the order of magnitude. Founders and more than 140 partners are sharing an income pool today worth tens of millions of dollars, not billions. Equity and rewards in this model become valuable only if supply grows by orders of magnitude. Romero has projected about $1 billion of OUSD on Tempo within a few months, more than $10 billion during 2027 and potentially more than $100 billion over several years. Those are projections from a partner with a stake in the outcome. Even the last of them would be under half of the $217 billion that USDT and USDC hold now.

The scale gap

CoinDesk puts Tether's USDT circulation at about $143 billion and Circle's USDC at about $74 billion, in a stablecoin market of more than $300 billion. Against $217 billion combined, the $1 billion liquidity commitment equals about 0.46% (our arithmetic), and actual supply of $666 million, about 0.31%. Crypto Briefing reports $2.6 billion of transfer volume and 554 holders; transfer volume is not the same as supply, and these figures come from the project. OUSD is listed on Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap.

Liquidity is the central issue because, in Romero's words to American Banker, a new stablecoin's day-one liquidity determines what businesses can do with it. A payment processor can only settle in a coin if it can convert large amounts without moving the price. A coin with a few hundred million dollars in supply is a different proposition for a merchant processor than one with tens of billions, whatever its distribution deals.

The counter-argument and the open questions

The case for OUSD is that incumbents hold liquidity and that liquidity can be rented. If Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase and Shopify route flows through one coin, and if mint and redeem are free, the network may reach scale faster than a conventional start-up. KeyBanc analysts, in a note reported by American Banker, said Circle would be the company most negatively affected if OUSD succeeds and that its economic structure should in theory let payments and fintech platforms benefit. The opposing view is that network effects favour the coins with the deepest markets, and that partners who are paid on supply have an incentive to grow it.

That last point is also a design question. Rewards tied to supply and transaction activity, with no mint or redeem fee, reward the metrics that are cheapest to generate. Nothing in the sources suggests that any partner has done so, or that safeguards are absent; it is simply the sort of rule that any reward scheme based on volume has to address, and the coverage does not say how the undisclosed threshold works. Coinbase is also a founding partner of OUSD and a distribution partner of a rival, USDC, so its incentives are not simple.

What the evidence does not establish

• How much reserve income reaches coin holders, partners or the issuer, and the size of the management fee.
• Transaction limits, redemption terms for non-partners, and OUSD's regulatory status. American Banker does not state the latter and mentions only that the market is maturing after the GENIUS Act.
• The number and identity of partners. The sources give more than 140 and more than 200, and differ on whether Shopify is a founding partner.
• Whether the $666 million supply figure, which the project shared, is independently verifiable on-chain data.

OUSD is a serious attempt to reallocate stablecoin economics towards usage. After its first week it is also a coin with 0.3% of its competitors' supply and an incentive pool measured in tens of millions of dollars. The next evidence worth watching is not a new partner announcement but the supply curve, and a disclosure of how reserve income is shared.