Open USD: The Stablecoin That Wants to Share Billions in Profits

APIA, Samoa – August 13, 2026 – The multi-hundred-billion-dollar stablecoin market has long operated on a simple, lucrative principle: issuers mint digital dollars, invest the real-dollar reserves in Treasuries, and keep the interest. Now, a new challenger, backed by a formidable coalition of financial and technology giants, is threatening to upend that entire model by asking a revolutionary question: What if we shared the profits?

This is the central premise behind Open USD (OUSD), a new stablecoin unveiled on June 30 that has sent shockwaves through the fintech world. A new report from HTX Ventures, the investment arm of the HTX exchange, titled Open Infrastructure, Closed Financial Rails, argues that OUSD represents a potential paradigm shift. While blockchain provided an open technical layer, the economic layer remained closed. OUSD, according to the report, aims to pry it open.

A New Economic Blueprint

For years, stablecoins have evolved from niche crypto-trading tools into critical plumbing for institutional finance. Visa's stablecoin settlement pilot, for example, was processing transactions at an annualized run rate of approximately $7 billion by April 2026. Despite this, the economic benefits have remained highly concentrated. Issuers like Circle (USDC) and Tether (USDT) have built multi-billion-dollar revenue streams by retaining the yield from their vast reserve holdings, while the exchanges, wallets, and payment processors that provide user access and create use cases are left to negotiate for scraps through bilateral deals.

Open USD, operated by an independent company called Open Standard, proposes to rewrite these rules. The model, slated for launch later this year, is built on three fundamental shifts identified by HTX Ventures:

1. From Fee-Based Access to Subsidized Distribution: Under the Open Standard framework, enterprise partners can mint and redeem OUSD without fees or volume limits. The interest yield from the reserves, instead of being pocketed by the issuer, will be used to subsidize the high costs of customer acquisition, regional compliance, and building payment rails.

2. From Bilateral Deals to Network-Wide Revenue Sharing: After a small management fee for Open Standard, the vast majority of reserve yield is earmarked for the partners who adopt and promote OUSD. This creates a unified economic framework where participants, from global payment networks to regional banks, share in the network's success based on their contributions.

3. From Issuer Governance to Participant Governance: Control will not reside with a single company. Instead, a board composed of select partner institutions will govern the rules of the road, giving a voice to the entities that bear the business and regulatory responsibilities of operating the network.

This economic proposition is a direct assault on the incumbent model. “The industry's next phase will be determined by how participants contest control rights and the allocation of economic benefits,” the HTX Ventures report states, and OUSD is the first major contender to put that theory into practice.

A Coalition of Titans

What gives OUSD's ambitious plan credibility is not its code—which it notably shares with Origin Protocol's much smaller, 2020-era Origin Dollar (OUSD), though the two are distinct products—but its staggering list of partners. Over 140 entities have signed on, forming a who's who of global finance and technology: Visa, Mastercard, and American Express; tech and e-commerce giants like Google and Shopify; crypto powerhouses including Coinbase and Ripple; and institutional behemoths like BlackRock and BNY.

For these players, the motivation is clear. Instead of being mere distribution channels for a product whose profits they don't share in, OUSD offers them a chance to become co-owners of the infrastructure itself. It transforms them from renters into stakeholders. Banks see an opportunity to gain revenue from stablecoin infrastructure even as it potentially erodes traditional deposit and correspondent banking fees. Payment processors gain a new, low-cost rail to offer merchants. For all involved, it’s a chance to build on a neutral platform rather than one controlled by a direct competitor.

“Such shifts are most likely in middle- and back-office infrastructure, where multiple institutions are required and no single platform can independently provide customer reach, regional licensing, fiat rails, and counterparty networks,” notes the HTX Ventures report. The OUSD consortium is a pragmatic commercial solution to a collective action problem.

From Grand Vision to Ground Reality

However, a considerable distance separates a press release from a functioning global payment network. The viability of Open USD's model hinges entirely on execution, and critical details remain under wraps. As HTX Ventures cautions, the design of the revenue-sharing rules is paramount. Will allocation be based on balances held, which favors capital-rich institutions, or on transaction volume, which could be gamed? A workable mechanism must carefully weigh multiple factors like payment volume, customer acquisition, and compliance investments.

Furthermore, consortium governance is notoriously complex and can be slower than the decisive leadership of a single issuer. Getting over 140 partners, many of whom are competitors, to agree on critical rules for risk, data, and compliance will be a monumental task. The true power of the governing board will be determined not by the logos on its roster, but by what it can actually decide.

Analysts are cautiously optimistic but stress that the proof will be in the payment volume. “Joining a consortium is easy; migrating core business is hard,” one industry expert commented. The true test will come when OUSD goes live and the market sees whether partners commit real-world liquidity and transaction flows to the network. Until then, with key details like the exact reserve composition and custodian still unconfirmed, OUSD remains a powerful idea waiting to be tested by reality.

The Next Frontier of Financial Infrastructure

The questions raised by Open USD extend far beyond the stablecoin market. It forces a fundamental re-evaluation of how value is created and distributed across the entire financial ecosystem. When banks, asset managers, and payment processors all contribute the assets, customers, and compliance capabilities to a shared network, who should profit and who should set the rules?

If models like OUSD gain traction, competition will evolve. It will no longer be just about issuance scale or on-chain liquidity. The new battleground will be defined by who contributes the most network value, who gets a share of the revenue, who controls customer data, and who has a seat at the governance table.

The future of financial infrastructure may not be the fully decentralized ideal envisioned by crypto purists, but rather a move away from single-company control toward shared networks. These consortiums, born of commercial necessity, will allow regulated participants to connect, share returns, and govern major decisions together. As HTX Ventures concludes, the industry is entering a new era focused on the redistribution of revenue, customers, and rule-setting, a shift that will undoubtedly shape the financial landscape for years to come.