A brand new dollar stablecoin called Open USD went live on 30 September, and the names behind it read like a roll call of global payments. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Shopify and Coinbase have each taken an equal founding stake in the coin’s issuer, Open Standard, and together they have committed more than $1 billion to building its liquidity over the coming months.
The launch arrives as Bitcoin holds its ground near $84,000, worth roughly £63,400 in British money. With the wider market watching bond yields more closely than charts this week, the arrival of a payments industry stablecoin suggests big finance is done waiting for Washington to make up its mind.
A stablecoin with payments giants as co owners
Open USD, which trades under the ticker OUSD, launched on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, according to CoinDesk. Rather than a single company calling the shots, the five founding partners each hold an equal initial stake in Open Standard, the company issuing the coin.
The ownership model is unusual. Open Standard plans to hand most of its equity to the partners over the next four to five years, with each one’s share decided by how much OUSD supply and transaction activity it generates. In plain terms, the partners that actually get people using the coin earn the biggest slice. Chief executive Zach Abrams summed up the ambition in three words, telling CoinDesk, “We’re building money.”
Taking on Tether and Circle
OUSD enters a market with two entrenched leaders. Tether’s USDT has about $183.7 billion in circulation across all chains, while Circle’s USDC sits near $74.2 billion, based on DefiLlama data. A $1 billion liquidity commitment is serious firepower, but it is still a fraction of what the incumbents command.
What Open USD lacks in scale it makes up for in distribution. Between them, Visa and Mastercard sit in almost every wallet in Britain, Stripe powers checkouts for millions of online businesses and Shopify hosts vast numbers of independent stores. If any newcomer can put a stablecoin in front of ordinary shoppers, it is this group.
What it could mean for UK shoppers
For British consumers the pitch is simple enough. Stablecoins promise the speed of crypto with the steadiness of the dollar, which makes them useful for paying online, sending money abroad and shopping across borders without card fees piling up. A coin backed by the very networks that already process UK card payments could find its way into familiar checkouts faster than any crypto native rival.
There are still open questions. Nobody has said when, or whether, OUSD will be available to UK retail users, and stablecoin rules in Britain are still taking shape. But the direction of travel is clear. Payments giants no longer see stablecoins as an experiment happening somewhere else.
The policy backdrop, $13 million of lobbying and no law
The launch also lands in the middle of a bruising policy fight in the United States. The crypto industry spent more than $13 million on federal lobbying in the first half of 2026, with about $8 million of that tied to the Clarity Act, a market structure bill that fell short in a September Senate vote, according to a CoinDesk review of lobbying filings.
Coinbase led the spending at around $2.2 million, with Kraken putting in almost $1 million. OpenSecrets data cited by CoinDesk places Coinbase among the top ten of all securities and investment lobbyists, ahead of Goldman Sachs and Andreessen Horowitz. A Coinbase spokesperson said the push brought the bill close to passage and laid groundwork for action now moving through the SEC and CFTC, adding that “Washington is a long game.”
Meanwhile the CFTC has sent two event contract rules to the White House, seeking definitions that could override state level gambling claims, another sign that regulators and companies are moving ahead without waiting for Congress.
Bitcoin holds above $83,000 as the jobs report looms
Back on the charts, Bitcoin was changing hands near $84,001 in the early hours of Thursday, about 33 percent below its all time high of $126,156, per DefiLlama. In sterling terms that is roughly £63,400, with UK exchanges quoting between about £63,300 and £63,680 through the day.
The coin is still digesting a cooler than expected US inflation report. August PCE came in at 3.4 percent against forecasts of 3.7, which briefly lifted Bitcoin above $85,500 before stubbornly high Treasury yields, with the 10 year near 5.3 percent, dragged it back. The next test arrives on Friday, when the US jobs report lands at 8.30am ET, or 1.30pm UK time. The 21 September high of $87,291 remains the nearest marker above the current price.
