Open USD Launched With a $1 Billion Commitment. How Much Is Actually in Circulation?

Open USD (OUSD), a dollar stablecoin operated by Open Standard, went live on Sept. 30, 2026 on Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo. It was announced June 30 with more than 140 businesses involved, and five founding partners: Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa. Launch coverage cited more than $1 billion in near-term launch liquidity. That number is easy to misread. This article explains what it measures, and what the independent supply data does and doesn't show.

Nothing here is investment advice. It is a description of reported figures.

What Was Announced

• The operator. Open Standard, led by CEO Zach Abrams, who founded Bridge, the stablecoin issuer owned by Stripe, according to Payments Dive.
• The partners. Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa as founding partners, which Bitcoin.com reports hold equal initial equity, plus more than 200 partners overall.
• The chains. Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo.
• Minting and redeeming. One-to-one with no fee, through Coinbase, Mastercard, Stripe and Visa paths.
• The reserves. Held at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY, with monthly attestations promised.
• The $1 billion. Blockhead characterizes it as seed liquidity, not organic demand. The launch post gave no circulating supply figure, and the amounts from individual partners were not broken out.

What "$1 Billion Launch Liquidity" Means

A commitment to provide liquidity is not the same as coins in circulation. Circulating supply is the number of tokens that exist and are held or in use. Liquidity commitments can describe capital partners are willing to deploy to mint, hold or make markets in a token. Reporting on OUSD uses the figure for the second meaning, so the right comparison is between the $1 billion commitment and the actual supply on chain.

What Trackers Reported

None of the following figures come from Open Standard, and we could not verify them against a primary source. They are third-party reports.

• Coinliva: about $468 million at launch, with reserves of $468.45 million, of which $257.2 million was cash and $211.2 million Treasuries and money market funds.
• KuCoin and Jinse flash items: roughly 477.3 million tokens within two hours, with reserves of $211.2 million in Treasuries and $266.1 million in cash, and more than 90% of supply on Tempo.
• Cryptobriefing (Oct. 7): about $666.3 million as of Oct. 5. It reports Ethereum supply growing from about $10 million to more than $100 million in a week, 71% of supply on Tempo and about 9% on Ethereum at launch, ten wallets holding about 74%, and between 554 and 613 holders. It cites on-chain data without naming a provider and also reports $2.6 billion of transfer volume and about $4.1 million of decentralized-exchange volume in six days.

The figures do not reconcile. A second Cryptobriefing item reports a $626.3 million weekly addition that does not match the $666.3 million total. Differences in timing, what counts as supply and which chains are included could all explain it.

What We Can and Can't Conclude

This section is analysis, not reporting.

• Supply is well below $1 billion, but still significant. Even the lowest tracker figure, about $468 million, would be a large first week for a new stablecoin, though a handful of wallets reportedly hold most of it.
• Concentration and transfer volume suggest institutional flows, not retail adoption. Ten wallets holding about 74% and low exchange volume relative to transfers fit that picture, but the data is unverified.
• Reserves are the test. Monthly attestations from the custodians will show whether the reserves match supply. Differences between tracker reserve figures show why that matters.
• Standing in the market is unproven. Whether merchants, payment networks and developers use OUSD after the launch incentives fade is the open question.

For background on how these coins work and how the US rulebook applies, see our ultimate guide to stablecoins and our piece on the GENIUS Act framework.

Why It Matters

• Payments companies now issue dollars. Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase backing one coin is a different structure from a single issuer.
• Headline figures can mislead. A $1 billion liquidity commitment and a supply of a few hundred million are different measures.
• Data quality is thin. Supply and holder figures come from trackers that disagree with each other.
• Attestations are the next data point. The first monthly reserve report will give a primary-source number.