Points of Focus
- CoinShares says OUSD’s revenue-sharing model pressures Circle’s reserve margin.
- Circle (CRCL) fell roughly 17% on June 30, the day OUSD was announced.
- The Circle-Coinbase revenue-share agreement is up for renewal on August 18.
Open USD (OUSD), a new stablecoin backed by more than 140 partners including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and Coinbase, is designed to share reserve income with the businesses that distribute it rather than keep that income at the issuer level, according to CoinShares research published July 13.
The firm’s analysis argues the model puts direct pressure on the two things that matter most to Circle, the issuer of USDC: its reserve margin and the cost of buying distribution.
Two pressure points on Circle’s business
CoinShares’ research lays out the mechanism plainly. Circle already pays Coinbase roughly half of USDC’s reserve income to secure distribution. OUSD takes that discretionary cost and makes it the default, every partner in the consortium earns yield rather than negotiating for it. CoinShares writes that this “could significantly alter what Circle’s partners can credibly demand.”
The timing sharpens the pressure. The Circle-Coinbase revenue-sharing agreement ends its initial three-year term on August 18, 2026, weeks after Coinbase joined the Open USD consortium.
Per CoinShares, the agreement does not lapse on its own if the two sides cannot agree on modifications, it automatically renews for another three years. That makes outright non-renewal unlikely, but CoinShares notes it gives Coinbase a stronger negotiating position, since the company now has exposure to both sides of the stablecoin economics debate at once.
The market has already repriced Circle
Circle’s stock fell approximately 17% on June 30, the day OUSD was announced, a decline CoinShares attributes to the consortium’s scale and the incentive it gives each partner to push the new stablecoin. CoinShares is careful to note the reaction was not one-sided: a same-week Russell index reconstitution likely added technical selling pressure independent of the OUSD news itself.
The consortium model itself has a mixed track record that warrants weighing against the current enthusiasm. Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe were also founding members of Facebook’s Libra Association in 2019, a similarly blue-chip stablecoin consortium that every major payments partner abandoned within months, rebranding as Diem before the project was sold for parts in 2022. Whether OUSD’s 140-partner roster proves more durable than that earlier attempt is a question the current market reaction does not yet answer.
CoinShares’ research also flags a regulatory dimension shaping how OUSD is structured. The GENIUS Act already bars stablecoin issuers from paying yield to holders outright, while the CLARITY Act debate is separately weighing whether platforms can offer yield indirectly. OUSD’s design, routing reserve income to distribution partners rather than end users, sidesteps that restriction by moving the economics up a layer.
What CoinShares says to watch next
CoinShares’ own framing leaves the outcome open rather than settled. The firm writes that Circle could emerge stronger if it weathers the competitive threat, calling it “the category leader, and a derisked one,” while noting Tether’s dollar-liquidity business in emerging markets is unlikely to compete with OUSD’s Western, fintech-oriented consortium at all.
Until OUSD launches in the second half of 2026, CoinShares says the key things to watch are how USDC supply evolves, whether Circle adjusts its distribution economics, and what levers it can pull against what the firm frames as an existential threat to the reserve-income model that has defined stablecoin issuance until now.
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