OUSD Goes Live as Partners Claim the Reserve Yield

Open Standard put Open USD (OUSD) into production on September 30, three months after it first named the token, with mint and burn at no cost at a 1:1 dollar rate. Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa pledged more than $1 billion of near-term liquidity as founding partners. The change that matters sits under the peg. Partners keep the interest on the cash and Treasuries that back the coin, after a small management fee, which is the claim Circle’s stock priced in June.

Chief executive Zach Abrams, the Bridge co-founder who left Stripe to run Open Standard full time, put the pitch in one line when the token launched.

Stablecoins should be better money. Today, they fall short. OUSD is built to change that.

Zach Abrams, CEO, Open Standard

How OUSD Pays Its Distribution Partners

Open Standard’s June design note said businesses still hit three walls with the dollar tokens they already use: mint and redeem fees that bite at size, reserve income that stays with the issuer, and no say if the issuer’s roadmap drifts. OUSD is built as the inverse of that stack. Partners receive all reserve earnings after a management fee, mint and redeem with no fee and no volume cap in the company’s own wording, and sit under an independent company rather than a single issuer.

THE THREE DESIGN RULES

• Build for scale: Businesses can mint and redeem Open USD at no cost and with no artificial limits on volume, the June note said.
• Earn by default: Partners receive all of the earnings from the reserves, less a small management fee to cover operating costs.
• Govern together: Open Standard is an independent company whose board is meant to represent partners, not one issuer’s equity holders.

That split is the product. Circle, Tether and most other dollar issuers make money by parking reserves in cash and short-term Treasuries and keeping the coupon, then bargaining over how much of that coupon to send to exchanges and payment apps. Open Standard writes the payout into the coin. Partners also earn rewards in line with the supply and activity they drive, and they can earn equity in the company on the same basis.

OUSD VERSUS AN ISSUER-HELD YIELD COIN

BNY, which holds part of the cash behind OUSD, wrote in that June note that it sees room for stablecoins to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030. The figure is a bank’s forecast, not a float OUSD has earned. The float starts at whatever the five founders actually mint.

The Five Founders and a $1 Billion Pledge

The June list read like a trade-show badge wall, more than 140 names across cards, banks, software and crypto. By launch day the network was more than 200 financial firms, fintechs, banks and global businesses. The cap table is much smaller. On September 24, Open Standard named Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa as the initial founding partners, each investing in the company and helping stand up supply.

FROM ANNOUNCEMENT TO FIRST MINT

1. June 30, 2026: Open Standard unveils Open USD with more than 140 businesses and three design rules, including earn by default.
2. September 24, 2026: Five founding partners commit more than $1 billion of near-term launch liquidity, and Abrams becomes full-time CEO.
3. September 30, 2026: OUSD goes live on Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo, with minting through BVNK, Stripe and the Visa Stablecoin Platform.
4. October 1, 2026: Coinbase is scheduled to open the fourth mint and burn path.

Abrams had been running Bridge, the Stripe-owned issuance firm, and Open Standard at the same time. In a September 24 post he said he was leaving Stripe because Bridge’s impact was “constrained by issuers’ economics and incentives.” Open Standard says it will add a limited number of extra founding partners, then seat a board drawn from founders and other shareholders. Abrams has also said management runs the company, rather than a committee of hundreds, after some analysts asked whether a pack of rivals can set a single roadmap.

The $1 billion figure is a liquidity pledge, not audited circulation. Open Standard has not published how much of that cash is already in the token, and it has not broken out each founder’s cheque.

Stripe Makes OUSD Its Default Stablecoin

The distribution event is not another listing. Stripe said OUSD is now the default stablecoin across Stripe products, including Treasury, card issuing, global payouts, on-ramp conversion and payments. Will Gaybrick of Stripe had already locked that line in June, when the token was still a press release.

That’s why Open USD will be the default stablecoin for businesses running on Stripe; they are the ones shaping the next 15 years of economic growth.

Will Gaybrick, Stripe, Open Standard June announcement

Stripe still lets firms pick other coins and other chains, and it said it will not force existing stablecoin balances onto OUSD. The default still changes the path of least resistance for new flows. On Tempo, the payments chain Stripe incubated with Paradigm, Tempo said OUSD launched with more than $400 million of liquidity. Dan Romero, Tempo’s chief business officer, said he sees a path to about $1 billion of OUSD on that chain in the next few months and more than $10 billion during 2027. Those numbers are his path, not a published float.

Businesses can mint through BVNK, Stripe and the Visa Stablecoin Platform from September 30. Coinbase follows on October 1. Mastercard sits on the founder line and on Open Standard’s own social post as an integration brand, while the launch blog names BVNK as the live path on that side of the market. Each path is supposed to support settlement, payment orchestration, trading, FX, wallets and cards, with the same 1:1 convert at no fee.

$OUSD is live.

Build with OUSD via @Coinbase @Mastercard @Stripe and @Visa. Each integration path supports 1:1 USD conversion at no cost.

Read the announcement: https://t.co/177w9TlM77. pic.twitter.com/SEWT6vCXPS

— Open Standard (@openstandard) September 30, 2026

Pi Network posted on September 30 that it is partnering with Open Standard and will look at rewards for its users. That is a distribution experiment, not a second issuer.

Who Issues OUSD and Holds the Reserves?

Open Standard does not mint the token. OUSD is issued by Bridge Building Inc, a Stripe company. Reserves sit at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY. Bridge said it will not charge mint or redeem fees and will not impose liquidity limits that delay those trades, and it said it has already issued more than $1 billion across dozens of stablecoins, a lifetime figure that includes OUSD rather than OUSD’s own float.

WHO TOUCHES THE RESERVES

An Aave onboarding note describes the backing as cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries and qualifying money market funds, held at least 1:1 in accounts titled for the benefit of holders. The same note says minting has no minimum or maximum size, runs 24 hours a day over FedNow for firms that finish KYB with Bridge, BVNK, Coinbase or the Visa Stablecoin Platform, and caps redemptions at 10 percent of outstanding supply in any 24-hour window. That cap sits beside Open Standard’s June line about no artificial limits on volume. Treat the 10 percent figure as the Aave note’s description of operations, not as a second Open Standard slogan.

Bridge National Trust Bank Is Not Live Yet

Bridge also flagged an OCC conditional approval to form Bridge National Trust Bank. The footnote is blunt. The trust bank is a separate legal entity in organization, it is not yet operational, and it does not currently issue OUSD. The OCC nod is not a final charter and does not authorize that bank to issue OUSD under the GENIUS Act. Until that changes, the live issuer remains Bridge Building Inc. Monthly attestations are due at reserves.bridge.xyz/ousd, with the first EY report expected at the end of the first month the token is public.

Circle’s Stock Priced the Threat in June

Circle shares fell more than 17% on Tuesday, June 30, the day Open Standard named Open USD, before a dollar of the new token existed. They closed at $82.17 on September 30, down 1.83% from $83.70, on the day OUSD actually went live. Jefferies, writing after the June slide, told clients it would not buy the dip and flagged Coinbase’s role in the new coin as extra risk. The firm has also said Circle draws about 95% of its revenue from interest on USDC reserves.

CIRCLE ON THE DAY OUSD WENT LIVE

• Launch-day close: CRCL finished September 30 at $82.17, down 1.83% on the session.
• June shock: The stock fell more than 17% on June 30 when Open Standard first unveiled the token.
• USDC float: Circle said USDC circulation ended the second quarter at $73.3 billion.
• Q2 take: Total revenue and reserve income was $701 million, with a 50% adjusted EBITDA margin.

Coinbase is on both sides of that math. Under the 2023 collaboration agreement, Coinbase receives the reserve income on USDC held inside Coinbase products and half of a residual ecosystem pool. Circle said it renewed that deal through 2029, even after Coinbase joined Open Standard. A founder stake in OUSD does not, on those terms, cancel USDC inside Coinbase. It does give Coinbase a second residual, and it gives Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Shopify a residual they did not have on USDC.

WHERE EXPERTS DISAGREE

• Jeremy Allaire, Circle CEO: He has questioned whether a large consortium can coordinate, and he has said Circle already shares the bulk of its income with distributors while keeping enough to fund infrastructure.
• Jefferies analysts: They argued the June selloff had not cleared the risk, and that Coinbase’s participation in OUSD is a new headwind for USDC supply growth.
• Zach Abrams, Open Standard: He rejects the idea that hundreds of partners vote on product, and says a small founder group holds ownership while the wider network is paid on supply and activity.

Allaire’s point on sharing is real. Coinbase already takes a large slice of USDC yield. The slice Open Standard is selling is the one that used to stop at the card networks, the processors and the software firms that move money but never booked the T-bill coupon. That is a different customer than an exchange rebate.

The Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo Mints

OUSD is issued natively on four chains, with no wrapped stand-in on those networks, according to Open Standard and the Solana Foundation. Trading starts on Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap, with more venues promised later. Aave Labs has already posted a proposal to list the token on Aave.

OFFICIAL OUSD CONTRACT ADDRESSES

Solana’s mint uses Token-2022, the same token standard PayPal, Fiserv and Western Union have used for regulated dollars on that chain. Native issuance is the credit-memo point the Solana Foundation keeps repeating: there is no second pool to reconcile against a token that lives somewhere else. Tempo is the payments-specific chain in the set, with Stripe as a parent and OUSD as the default there.

The race this launch actually joins is over who books the coupon on the bills, and which checkout, card and exchange button puts the token in someone’s operating account. Coinbase’s mint path opens October 1. The first EY attestation is due at the end of the first month the coin is public. Until those two dates print real supply and real reserves, OUSD is a live contract with a founder cheque attached, not a second USDC.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Can a Business Mint and Redeem OUSD?

An Aave onboarding note says minting is open 24 hours a day, including via FedNow, to firms that finish KYB with Bridge, BVNK, Coinbase or the Visa Stablecoin Platform, with no minimum or maximum size per mint and with minting limited only by reserve value. Redemptions in that note are capped at 10 percent of outstanding supply in any 24-hour period, which is a separate operational limit from Open Standard’s no-fee 1:1 convert.

Who Attests OUSD Reserves, and When Is the First Report Due?

EY is named as the monthly attestor in the Aave note, covering reserve mix and a reconciliation to outstanding OUSD, with the first report expected at the end of the first month the token is live to the public. Open Standard said the files will sit at reserves.bridge.xyz/ousd, and it has not published a day-one reserve breakdown in the launch blog.

Does Stripe Require Firms to Convert Other Stablecoins to OUSD?

No. Stripe said OUSD is the default configuration, including on Tempo, and that it will keep supporting other stablecoins and chains and will not require users to convert balances they already hold. Firms can still pick the coin and chain that match their cost, speed and compliance needs.

Is OUSD Wrapped on Solana, Ethereum, Base or Tempo?

No. Open Standard and the Solana Foundation both describe native issuance on all four launch chains, with no wrapped version and no separate liquidity pool that has to be reconciled against a home-chain token. The Solana mint is the Token-2022 address ousd2mJsPEckLHcSCDxyKD7NDGARZcfLbDZkKiatYHB.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a newly launched dollar token and of publicly traded Circle shares, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, trading advice, tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, mint, hold or redeem OUSD, USDC or any other digital asset or security. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser, attorney or accountant who understands stablecoins and U.S. securities rules before acting on any figure or product described here. Prices, partner lists, contract addresses, reserve figures and regulatory statuses are taken from the cited company posts, filings-style notes and market data as of the dates named in the piece and can change without notice.