140 Firms Including Visa, BlackRock, and Google Just Built a Circle Killer

140 Firms Including Visa, BlackRock, and Google Just Launched a Stablecoin That Gives All the Profit to Users — Circle Stock Cratered 17%

Circle built a billion-dollar company by keeping the interest on your dollars.

Yesterday, 140 of the biggest names in finance and tech decided they’d rather keep it themselves.

On June 30, 2026, a consortium called Open Standard unveiled Open USD (OUSD) — a new stablecoin with a deceptively simple model: zero minting fees, zero redemption fees, and 100% of reserve yield distributed back to partner businesses. No single issuer sitting on the interest.

The backers include: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, Shopify, Google, Samsung, DoorDash, BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Aave, Fireblocks, and Solana itself.

Circle’s stock (CRCL) dropped 17.5% in after-hours trading. It has now lost roughly 40% of its value in 30 days.

Why Circle Is Bleeding

Here’s the brutal math: approximately 99% of Circle’s revenue comes from the interest earned on USDC’s reserves — the yield from the Treasury bills and money market instruments backing every dollar of USDC in circulation.

Circle doesn’t share much of that. It collected roughly $908 million just from its distribution deal with Coinbase in 2024.

Open USD’s model flips this entirely. Treasury yield goes to partners, not to the issuer. If you mint OUSD, you keep the upside. The stablecoin itself is governed by a shared consortium instead of a private company optimizing for shareholder returns.

That’s not just a product difference. It’s a fundamental attack on Circle’s entire business model — and by extension, Tether’s too.

Who’s Actually Behind This

Open Standard reads like someone copy-pasted the Forbes 500 and the DeFi Summer alumni list:

• Payments rails: Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Stripe, Adyen, Klarna, Fiserv
• TradFi: BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, U.S. Bank
• Big Tech: Google, Shopify, Samsung, DoorDash
• Crypto native: Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Aave, Fireblocks, Solana Foundation

This isn’t a scrappy DeFi protocol hoping for adoption. This is the payments and asset management infrastructure of the global economy launching a coordinated stablecoin alternative.

OUSD will launch on Solana first, with a broader multi-chain rollout expected later in 2026.

Is Circle Actually Dead?

Probably not immediately. ARK Invest analysts noted the Circle selloff may be an “overreaction” — adoption is the real test, and inertia in financial infrastructure is enormous. USDC has deep integrations across DeFi, CEXs, and institutional desks that don’t flip overnight.

But the structural threat is real and the timing is brutal. Circle’s distribution deal with Coinbase — worth nearly $1 billion annually — comes up for renewal in August 2026. Coinbase is now a named backer of Open USD. That’s not subtle.

Tether, sitting on even more reserve income, faces a similar long-term pressure. The stablecoin business model of the last decade — keep the yield, charge the users — may be on borrowed time.

Why This Matters for Crypto Jobs

When the stablecoin economy restructures, hiring follows. Here’s where the heat is:

Hiring now:

• Solana infrastructure engineers — OUSD launches on Solana Day 1; the chain needs to handle institutional-grade settlement volume
• Compliance & regulatory specialists — 140 firms means 140 legal and compliance teams suddenly needing stablecoin experts
• Institutional DeFi roles — BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered are all in the consortium; expect major TradFi hiring pushes for crypto-fluent staff
• Protocol/governance engineers — distributed governance at this scale is novel; someone has to build and maintain it

Under pressure:

• Circle employees should be watching August very carefully — a Coinbase distribution deal renewal at reduced terms would be an earnings cliff
• Tether’s team faces the same long-term competitive pressure, though Tether’s offshore structure insulates it somewhat short-term

The stablecoin industry has been a two-horse race for five years. Open USD just added 140 riders on a single horse. The rails they run on — and the engineers building those rails — are where the money is moving.

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Building in crypto payments, stablecoins, or DeFi infrastructure? Find roles at the companies reshaping the stablecoin landscape at Cryptogrind — the job board for crypto builders.