What Is Open USD (OUSD)?
Drawn from Episode 103 of Tokenized, with Simon Taylor, Cuy Sheffield of Visa and Christian Catalini of the MIT Crypto Economics Lab.
What is Open USD?
Open USD (OUSD) is a dollar stablecoin run by the Open Standard organization, announced in June and switched on in early October 2026 on Tempo, Ethereum, Solana and Base. Businesses can mint and burn it at par through Coinbase, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and Bridge, which issues the token.
“Either one currency, one asset becomes kind of the the interop layer for the digital economy, or we're gonna have massive fragmentation across stablecoins.”
— Christian Catalini, Founder, MIT Crypto Economics Lab; co-founder, Lightspark
Reserves stay with institutions including BlackRock rather than with a single issuer. Simon Taylor put supply at roughly 477 million at the time of recording, with larger commitments from partners still to come.
How OUSD mint and burn works
Mint and burn at one to one means a business can swap dollars for OUSD, and back, at par and at low cost. That is the feature Taylor heard most about from financial institutions at a conference in Miami: no fees on mint and burn, and no need to hedge small price moves between a stablecoin and the dollar.
“Like I don't want to be thinking about having to maintain some hedging against the tiny movements of a stablecoin against regular dollars. $1 is $1.”
— Simon Taylor, Host, Tokenized; Head of Market, Tempo
Distribution is deliberately plural. Cuy Sheffield noted that OUSD is available through Visa's stablecoin platform, through Mastercard, through Stripe and through Coinbase, so no single venue controls access.
Why a neutral issuer matters to banks
Some large financial institutions regard private stablecoin issuers as adversarial, even where Circle and Tether have driven real innovation. OUSD is pitched as the middle option: a token that, unlike a deposit, can travel beyond one bank, and unlike a private stablecoin, does not belong to a competitor.
“They they see the opportunity for something that, unlike a deposit, can actually go outside the walls of any one individual bank, but unlike a private stablecoin, feels somewhat credibly neutral.”
— Simon Taylor, Host, Tokenized; Head of Market, Tempo
Taylor described the design as giving away as much of the economics as possible, with reserve sharing meant to incentivise as many participants as possible.
Cooperation and competition, in the Visa mould
Sheffield compared the structure to the early days of Visa: members cooperate on the standard and how the asset is issued, then compete on use cases and services built on top. He also pointed to the speed of the Open Standard team, noting that earlier consortium efforts in tokenized deposits were announced years ago and still have not gone live.
“we expect to have vigorous competition among these members around the use cases and the value add services and the products around it.”
— Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto, Visa
Catalini outlined two successful futures. In one, OUSD becomes a Linux-foundation-style body for open standards in money movement. In the other, it becomes a Visa-like network and a profitable business in its own right. Founding members may prefer one or the other depending on where they sit in the stack.
The Libra comparison and what could go wrong
Catalini compared OUSD with Libra, the Facebook-led stablecoin project: a group of members with conflicting incentives will eventually pull in different directions once the product is real. Taylor named a second risk, that OUSD wins a few short-term use cases and nothing beyond them.
“Look, a few months into the Libra process, there were already discussions between different members that have conflicting incentives of some features of the standard.”
— Christian Catalini, Founder, MIT Crypto Economics Lab; co-founder, Lightspark
The test Catalini set is whether banks, including those in a consortium of 21 or more institutions exploring their own stablecoin, decide a neutral standard already does the job.
Where adoption is likeliest: emerging-market banks and capital markets
Sheffield sees large emerging-market banks as one of the biggest opportunities. They see stablecoins growing in their home markets but have not yet built them into products, and they need support and infrastructure from partners such as Visa.
“it means something to say that we're working with Visa and Open Standard, this entity that has some of the largest companies in the world, kind of coming together around this stablecoin”
— Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto, Visa
He added that capital markets, from trading to onchain lending, is wide open. Sheffield said Visa's own settlement pilots show the pattern: Lloyds used USDC to settle $750,000 with Visa over a seven-day pilot that included a weekend, which shows how banks are starting with settlement before widening to other uses.
- Treat OUSD as a liquidity and interoperability option. It is live on four networks with par mint and burn through five named partners, so treasury teams can test it without relying on one issuer.
- Watch governance under pressure. The Libra precedent suggests conflicts among members appear once the product ships, not before.
- Look for the use case, not the consortium. Catalini's test is whether OUSD ships product experiences that pull banks away from building their own coins.
- Supply is small. About 477 million at recording, in Episode 103, so the standard is early and liquidity depth will be the first thing to monitor.
This article is based on the Tokenized podcast episode
This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial, business, or legal advice. Views and opinions are those of the contributors and do not represent the opinions of any company they represent. When you buy cryptoassets your capital is at risk. Please do your own research.
This article is part of the Tokenized learning series — educational content on stablecoins, tokenization, and real-world assets from the Tokenized podcast, hosted by Simon Taylor and Cuy Sheffield.