When Open Standard announced Open USD a month ago, investors quickly interpreted the backing from Coinbase (COIN), Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) as a direct challenge to Circle (CRCL) and its $72 billion USDC stablecoin.
The announcement erased billions of dollars from Circle's market value. Shares fell as much as 20% — and have yet to recover — as the consortium unveiled more than 140 launch partners, fueling concerns that some of USDC's largest commercial partners were lining up behind a rival digital dollar.
The reaction highlighted a broader shift in the stablecoin market. Once dominated by a handful of crypto-native issuers like Circle, the sector now is drawing banks, payment networks and fintech firms eager to issue or distribute digital dollars as regulation clears the way for wider adoption. With that, the competitive battle is increasingly extending beyond issuing tokens to securing the payment rails, exchanges and financial platforms that put them into users' hands.