Do potential partners count as partners?
Written by: Eric, Foresight News
On the evening of June 30 Beijing time, the emergence of a new stablecoin once again stirred up the stablecoin landscape.
A company named Open Standard announced the launch of its stablecoin Open USD. With features like free minting and redemption, reserve asset yield sharing, and co-governance by partners, these open designs directly address the pain points in stablecoin distribution and seem very attractive.
What surprised the market most was that Open Standard had "secured" over 140 partners even before the stablecoin's launch.
The list includes several companies that have already issued stablecoins, such as Western Union, Ripple, MetaMask, Aave, etc. Gathering signatures from so many giants in both Web3 and traditional finance before the stablecoin's launch made the market surprised and full of expectations for Open USD's future development. The most obvious sign of this expectation was that Circle, the first publicly traded stablecoin company, saw its stock price plummet 17.55% that day, with less than 20% remaining from hitting a new low.
But soon, this explosive announcement was slapped in the face.
On July 3, according to a report by the Chosun Ilbo, some companies including Samsung Electronics, Dunamu (parent company of Upbit), Shinhan Financial Group, and K Bank stated that they had never negotiated matters related to Open USD (OUSD). A Samsung Electronics official said, "There was no formal negotiation, and we don't know what role we would play (in the alliance)." Shinhan Financial Holdings, Dunamu, and K Bank also said that Open Standard had asked about their willingness to participate in OUSD, and they only replied that they "would conduct a simple discussion," but their names were included in the alliance member list.
Tony Chung, head of BD at Korean Web3 media Blockmedia, also said that a representative of one of the Korean companies stated that they learned they were on the list from Korean media reports and were very confused because they had only casually replied, "If feasible, we will consider it."
Gabor Gurbacs, founder and CEO of OpenAssets, retweeted Tony Chung's post and said that it wasn't just Korean companies that were fooled. By contacting some of OpenAssets' clients on the list, Gabor Gurbacs received responses like: "They said they never signed or agreed to any agreement. Either the media seriously distorted the facts, or the participant list is misleading."
It seems that Open Standard's "hundred-company list" may have included some companies that were merely contacted. In the original announcement, Open Standard wrote: "Businesses across industries have signed up to use Open USD". Perhaps in Open Standard's eyes, not explicitly refusing means "agreeing" to use Open USD, but agreeing doesn't mean "must use".
This is a very typical marketing tactic that uses controversy to grab attention, and it did have some effect, but it feels like it's rubbing business ethics into the ground.
Facing such a fierce offensive and an "unethical" opponent, Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire published a long post on X questioning Open USD's "three major features":
Free minting and burning: Attractive in the short term, but may not be sustainable on a large scale, leading to a lack of funds to maintain bank relationships, regulatory licenses, and technical infrastructure. Circle already provides preferential terms to large partners through contracts, rather than being completely free.
Almost all yields shared with partners: May "starve" the infrastructure, leading to systemic underinvestment and limited platform scale. Circle itself already shares most of its revenue with distribution partners.
Alliance/multi-company governance: Circle previously co-founded the Centre Consortium with Coinbase, which was later integrated into Circle for independent issuance. He believes that the historical record of scaling multi-company products is "very poor" (slow coordination, difficult decision-making).
Jeremy still expressed his attitude of welcoming OUSD to join the "stablecoin family", but between the lines of his post, he conveyed a view: Stablecoin is a business that forms a winner-takes-all situation through time accumulation, and it's not as simple as modifying a few mechanisms to "get a seat at the table".
In addition to these negative controversies, some companies on the list have clearly stated that they will support Open USD's development. Stripe said it will set OUSD as the default stablecoin for businesses using stablecoins on Stripe; Coinbase also said it will integrate OUSD into Base and other chains, with plans to launch it later in 2026 for expanding on-chain transactions, payments, DeFi, and other scenarios.
Payment network giants like Visa and Mastercard, financial institutions like BlackRock and BNY Mellon, and crypto-native projects like Aave, Solana, and Ripple have also expressed support, but no specific cooperation methods have been clarified yet.
According to the announcement, the founding CEO of Open Standard is the CEO of Bridge. This Bridge is a fiat on/off-ramp solution provider that once reached cooperation with multiple competitors in the dispute over the issuance rights of Hyperliquid's native stablecoin USDH, but the Stripe that acquired it is developing the stablecoin chain Tempo, which has caused controversy. Stripe also clarified its cooperation relationship immediately after Open Standard's announcement, so there should be a relatively close connection between the two.
A user named Bojan on X said that Open Standard's promotion is a typical "legitimacy-borrowing" behavior, which means quickly enhancing one's own legitimacy and credibility by borrowing the reputation or endorsement of other well-known and reliable entities, while not actually obtaining deep recognition or formal authorization from the other party. For the stablecoin track that requires trust as a foundation, OUSD seems to have left some negative first impressions even before it was launched.