I really feel a bit dim when I read about things like this. It's either I am a very naive person and don't see the way of the world, or the emperor is naked and everyone else is just being polite.
The reason I see stablecoins achieving success is that they are less regulated than traditional banking. It's really just this. There isn't some technical reason that banks can't figure out how to let you easily send money to an online merchant in Dubai...other than that it's a highly regulated action.
So, what I don't understand about all this is: how are they going to avoid duplicating the system we already have? Are they somehow going to make it easy for me to pay anyone, anywhere, anytime? If not, It's just going to be a bunch of whoopdedoo to get the same thing we already have.
The list of "businesses that have signed up to use OpenUSD" is big:
Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Fiserv, Adyen, Cloudflare, Corpay, Jack Henry, Klarna, Affirm, Ramp, OnePay, Brex, Checkout.com, WEX, PayPay Corporation, Western Union, Nuvei, Remitly, Ria, Marqeta, MoneyGram, Nium, Worldline, Galileo, Highnote, i2C, Lithic, Thredd, Episode Six, Verituity, Félix, Taptap Send, CAL (Israel Credit Cards)
BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Intercontinental Exchange, National Australia Bank, DBS, U.S. Bank, BBVA, Mizuho Financial Group, Shinhan Financial Group, Westpac, Itaú, OCBC, ANZ, UOB, Chime, Banco Bradesco, Huntington Bank, Citizens Bank, KB Kookmin Card, Emirates NBD, Hanwha Group, Banorte, Bank Hapoalim, FNB South Africa, K Bank, SoFi, Woori Card, Absa, Kakao Bank, Samsung Card, Bank Leumi, Wenia by Grupo Cibest, Nedbank, Isbank, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank ADIB, Banco de Crédito del Perú, Mashreq, RAK Bank, Hana Card, Hyundai Card, BCcard, Cross River, Grupo Aval, Davivienda, The Bancorp, Pathward, Banca Transilvania, Nonghyup Card, Neo Financial, Maya Bank, Netbank, Freedom Bank Kazakhstan, Lead Bank, Kapital, MAX
Google, Samsung Electronics, IBM, Shopify, Mercado Libre, Mercado Pago, Infosys, DoorDash, Wix, Grab, Rakuten Group
Coinbase, Tempo, Bybit, Solana, OKX, Ripple, Crypto.com, Fireblocks, Gemini, MetaMask, Aave, eToro, Galaxy, Dunamu, Ledger, MoonPay, Anchorage Digital, Digital Asset, Trust Wallet, Meow, Morpho, Ether.Fi, Lightspark, zerohash, Bitso, Bridge, Rain, BVNK, Mesh, Privy, Bitget Wallet, StraitsX, Yellow Card, Reap, Brale, RedotPay, Immersve, Stellar, Polygon, Aptos Labs, Plasma, KAST, Blossom, Lemon
Apparently it will launch later this year. Their big thing is sharinginterest from reserves?
Open USD (OUSD) is designed to return most revenue generated from reserves (minus a small management fee) to participants who adopt and distribute it. This creates a sustainable incentive structure where participants are rewarded for growing adoption of the shared infrastructure, while the management fee ensures Open Standard can maintain the technical, compliance, and operational rigor required.
What am I missing about all this?
my brother, there are over 1.3 billion people in the world who are unbanked. They want access to a dollar denominated bank account. There is demand for it.
Why not bitcoin? USD is already a great interface for them, already established for their prices denomination and can do business calculation with certainty all over the world.
As simple as that.
That makes total sense...if OUSD can actually be useful to them -- which in my book probably means being much less regulated than US financial systems.
Do you anticipate that people in Iran will be able to use OUSD?
Well if OUSD requires any form of KYC, USDT will keep being used in Iran instead, and dominating all over the world. They won't be competitve. Not sure what they will decide.
I've suspected for awhile now that the success of stablecoins is going to definitely strengthen and extend the life of the dollar. Citizens of countries don't have to wait for their government to dollarize from the top down, they can dollarize from the bottom up and this is a huge market to which the US gov can export inflation.
It seems like OUSD may aid in that course. I didn't see much on their website about how they plan to navigate global use. I'm sure they have some fancy plan, but I wonder what it is.
Another way to look at this is to examine the list of players. Visa+Google+etc etc are all big companies but they are not members of the federal reserve system.
What we are seeing is that the regulatory moat that has protected banking services for last 100 years is destroying itself. There are 1.6B potential customers for USD but no way to serve them thanks to the rigid regulations.
So "stablecoins" (which is really nothing but a kinda of marketing term) offer a parallel business strategy. It offers a way to distribute a dollar-analog without the same regulatory burden.
It ultimately needs to be less regulated than the official system in order to be useful at its core goal of expanding dollar system to non-US persons.
This is also why Jamie Dimon (JPM) has been so mad and doing public freakouts about the issue of stablecoin companies paying interest rates to holders. If you notice carefully, the way OUSD is structured is to pay the companies that distribute it the interest but not the holders.
Its a clever workaround against JPM's ban of paying interest, but obviously it hurts the holders but rewards the "distributors".
JPM is going to attack this by suing and funding PR campaigns to increase the regulatory burden on things like OUSD, etc.
Expect to see lots of "bad people are using OUSD" stories showing up on CNN once rollout starts to happen.
according to Forbes this is bad news for Tether and Circle https://www.forbes.com/sites/christiancatalini/2026/06/30/why-an-open-standard-will-win-the-stablecoin-race/
Tether at least feels they have a competitor now:
source
https://twiiit.com/paoloardoino/status/2071982330915225771
One thought is that sometimes it's easier to just start over and avoid making the same mistakes than it is to fix the mistakes that have been made.
Stablecoins might be offering an opportunity to the establishment to have a less regulated financial system, as it may be politically untenable to "deregulate" the banks but not untenable to abstain from implementing some of the onerous regulations again.
This is Facebook's Libre project, rebranded. Same architecture and more or less the same principles; centralized actors issuing money for the rest of the lesser mortals. The emperor is stark naked but he realised that his subjects are as blind as bats so they won't be able to tell the difference. The fight for monetary control is just getting started
That they aren't after Bitcoin. They're after Tether and Circle.
That is an interesting thought. I would think that to eat Tether's lunch, they need to a) be as lightly regulated as Tether or b) increase regulation so that Tether is less useful.
In the US, they've probably already achieved this. USDT isn't issued here and USAT (Tether's GENIUS-compliant offering) is not exactly conquering the field.
USDC is pretty dominant in the US, so that does make sense. Would a stablecoin hooked up to Visa and Mastercard do better than USDC? I think it probably would. That does make the whole thing make more sense.
Already happened.
Yes because they know everyone. And they just pay you to integrate it (not a joke.)
Beware another snake in the grass!!
Backed by almost everyone except Circle for obviously.
Circle shares are down more than 10% shows how despicable and greedy the corporate world has become. Noone wants to let go past the supremacy. Even Google cheering for OUSD like a cheerleader, wtf!!
Look out ACH network