They Waited 7 Years for This Money
The article discusses the significant drop in share price of Circle, known as the "first stablecoin stock," triggered by the announcement of a new alliance including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, Coinbase, BlackRock, Google, IBM, and Ripple. This alliance plans to launch Open USD, a USD stablecoin, later this year. Key to the market reaction is Open USD's plan to distribute reserve-generated profits to its adopters, directly challenging Circle's core revenue model from USDC's reserve interest.
The piece draws a parallel to Facebook's 2019 Libra (later Diem) project, which involved many of the same companies. Libra failed due to regulatory pressure, its association with Facebook's controversial reputation, and overly ambitious global currency narratives. However, the underlying desire of these major financial and tech firms to create a new digital payment infrastructure persisted.
Over seven years, the landscape changed: clearer US stablecoin regulations (GENIUS Act), mature blockchain infrastructure, and companies gaining practical experience with crypto payments. Open USD presents a more modest, compliance-focused narrative—a settlement tool and enterprise payment rail rather than a revolutionary global currency.
While the new alliance poses a serious threat to Circle's profitability and exclusivity, it faces challenges typical of large consortia: slow decision-making and complex profit-sharing. USDC's established liquidity, trust, and integrations provide Circle with significant defenses. The market's reaction is seen partly as an emotional overreaction but also a necessary reevaluation of Circle's business model from a unique "stablecoin era ticket" to a "strong issuer" in a competitive commodity market.
Ultimately, the core ambition from the Libra era remains: to digitize the movement of dollar value on the internet and capture the adjacent commercial opportunities. The lesson learned is to pursue this goal not as a high-profile, platform-led revolution, but as a quiet, utility-focused infrastructure play.
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