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A year after the passage of the Genius Act legalized stablecoins, a bunch of big financial players have teamed up to launch a new, impressive-sounding stablecoin. Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, BlackRock and BNY are forming a consortium with over 140 firms to launch Open USD, which will debut later this year.
This is a big deal. Open USD aims to challenge the dominance of Circle and Tether in the $300 billion stablecoin market—and it looks to have a shot at doing so. The Open Standard consortium also has the support of biggest names in tech, e-commerce and fintech, including Google, Shopify and Chime, as well as several foreign banks. Those companies all say they’ll support Open USD in some way: Shopify, for instance, will allow its merchant customers to accept Open USD at checkout. (The news confirms my report on June 3 that this effort was being planned.)
The new venture is dangling attractive incentives to draw in these partners. For instance, Open Standard will share all of the revenue it generates from stablecoin reserves with distribution partners, minus a small management fee. It doesn’t plan to charge for converting stablecoin to dollars or vice versa. I hear a range of industry partners will jointly own the new venture.
The incentives appear superior to what Circle and Tether offer the companies, mostly crypto exchanges, that support their stablecoins. It's notable that Circle’s longtime partner, Coinbase, is one of the new venture’s leaders. Coinbase is the biggest distribution partner for Circle’s stablecoin and shares a portion of its revenue. The two companies are set to renew their revenue-sharing agreement in August, and each side could gain leverage by reducing its dependence on the other. It perhaps isn’t surprising that Circle shares fell 18% today, suggesting that investors worry the new offering will become a formidable competitor.
Open Standard still needs to finalize some important details: It’s unclear which company will be the issuer. To comply with the Genius Act, a legal entity must issue the currency. Open Standard will also need to hire a CEO, although Zach Abrams, CEO of Stripe-owned stablecoin firm Bridge, is serving as founding and interim CEO.
Past consortium efforts in stablecoins haven’t taken off. Facebook’s Libra project—which included numerous partners—shut down in 2022 under regulatory pressure. Paxos, which launched the USDG stablecoin in 2024 with some of the same partners as Open USD, has gained only $3 billion in market circulation for the token. After today’s news broke, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire tweeted that “we welcome continued innovation and competition.”
Perhaps more tellingly, he also retweeted a post listing all the challenges for Open USD, from building liquidity from a cold start to antitrust risk. Most importantly, it’s unclear how much demand there will be for stablecoins beyond crypto trading, still the dominant use for the tokens today. Stablecoins’ main purpose outside crypto is to facilitate cross-border money transfers. Partners of Open USD are hoping that if you build it, they will come.
How Tech Stocks Performed in the First Half
The first half of 2026 ended with a very mixed picture for tech stocks. While the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 12.8%, the broader picture wasn’t quite as healthy. We’ve got a bunch of big winners—mostly chip stocks Micron, Intel and Arm—and some lesser winners in cybersecurity stocks Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike.
The big-name tech stocks—those with a market capitalization above $1 trillion—had a generally unimpressive first half, with Alphabet posting the biggest gain while Microsoft suffered the biggest decline. And then there’s the slew of enterprise software stocks, which fell between 20% and 40%.—Martin Peers
Here’s a quick snapshot:
Nasdaq Composite Index +12.8%
Alphabet +14%
Nvidia + 7.3%
Apple +6.4%
Amazon +3.3%
Microsoft –22.9%
Meta Platforms –14.7%
Tesla –6.5%
Micron +304%
Intel +278%
Arm +224%
Oracle –24.8%
Palantir –34%
Salesforce –40.9%
ServiceNow –35%
Figma –51.6%
CrowdStrike +62.8%
Palo Alto Networks +85%
In Other News
• Anthropic on Tuesday released Claude Science, a new desktop application to assist biologists with research by writing code, literature reviews and research reports, drawing on databases of biology research and biology-focused AI models.
• Amazon Web Services said it would invest $1 billion to create a unit of staffers with the title of forward-deployed engineers, which would help business customers use AI.
• Jefferies has hired Alex Tingle from Goldman Sachs to lead the investment bank’s efforts in digital infrastructure deals, The Information reported.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out today's episode of TITV in which we discuss our exclusive reporting on former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky's new gig.
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