Author: Jae, PANews
Three weeks after launch, the Open Standard led by Stripe has delivered what appears to be an impressive report card: the circulating supply of its stablecoin OUSD has already reached $825 million. With funding support from founding partners, OUSD rapidly scaled up, but whether this capital has translated into sustained payment and transaction demand still requires an answer from on-chain data.
As of now, OUSD has only about 2,200 independent holding addresses, with the top ten wallets holding approximately 82% of the circulating supply. Over the same period, total on-chain transfer volume reached $3.7 billion, with an average transfer size of about $14,000. The high concentration of funds and holding addresses, combined with large average transfer amounts, indicates that early growth is more a reflection of institutional capital allocation and deployment, while adoption among ordinary users remains to be verified.
Beyond scale, OUSD must also answer another question: under a model that distributes reserve income to partners after deducting a small management fee, how will it cover operational costs such as compliance, clearing, and liquidity?
Top Ten Addresses Control 82%: Whales Feed the Pool, 80% of Funds Sit Idle Earning Interest
On September 30, operator Open Standard officially announced the launch of OUSD, issued by Stripe-owned Bridge. On the same day, five founding partners including Stripe, Coinbase, and Visa committed to collectively mint approximately $1 billion in OUSD.
As of October 20, OUSD's circulating market capitalization reached $825 million, with net minting of $898 million and redemptions of only $73 million, representing an almost one-sided net inflow trend.
However, the distribution structure of the funds still exposes its early-stage characteristics.
In terms of public chain distribution, the Tempo chain led by Stripe accounts for 64.1% of circulating market capitalization, dominating alone; Ethereum accounts for 15.1%, while Solana and Base together account for only 20%, corresponding to a market capitalization of approximately $170 million. In the Solana and Base ecosystems known for high-frequency trading and active DeFi, OUSD's volume being so small may instead indicate that its growth momentum does not come from native on-chain demand, but rather from targeted liquidity injection by the initiators.
The holder structure further confirms this. As of now, OUSD has only 2,200 independent holding addresses, with the top ten wallets collectively holding approximately 82% of the circulating supply, and the top-ranked address holding nearly 38% of the share. Based on this calculation, the average capital per address is approximately $375,000, a typical whale-dominated pattern.
Over the past three weeks, OUSD's total on-chain transfer volume reached $3.7 billion, with 271,200 cumulative transfers and an average transfer size of approximately $14,000. High capital throughput, low address count, and high average transfer amounts—these three characteristics together point to one conclusion: early capital is primarily infrastructure deployment and bulk allocation, with low retail user participation.
Real usage demand can also be glimpsed from liquidity data.
Currently, OUSD's DEX trading volume is approximately $7.7 million, corresponding to approximately $57 million in DeFi TVL, with a capital utilization rate of only 13.51%. In other words, more than 80% of OUSD is simply sitting quietly in wallets, not entering actual circulation activity.
On-chain liquidity distribution is also highly concentrated: Morpho alone accounts for 71.14% of the share, with TVL rapidly growing from zero to over $35 million in three weeks since launch; Orca and Uniswap account for 18.65% and 10.21% respectively. Funds mainly flow to lending protocols to earn interest, which is a typical capital allocation behavior.
OUSD Wins on Starting Scale, Adoption Speed Remains to Be Verified
Stablecoin scale growth is highly dependent on cold-start breakthroughs. OUSD's supply in its first three weeks is approximately 33 times that of USDG at the same period after launch, 6.5 times that of PYUSD, and 2.5 times that of U, with an initial volume far exceeding competitors at the same stage.
From the perspective of cold-start growth paradigms, the commercial resources that different stablecoins rely on will determine differences in their expansion paths.
USDG: Exchange-Embedded
As a fellow consortium-type stablecoin, USDG's approach is more direct: by binding with exchanges such as OKX, Robinhood, and Kraken, it embeds the stablecoin into their underlying architecture, requiring no additional user education.
This is a typical "exchange synergy strategy." On-chain data shows that approximately $2 billion in USDG is concentrated on the X Layer and Robinhood Chain public chains, accounting for over 65% of the network-wide share. Exchange gateways are one of the most powerful growth engines for stablecoins.
PYUSD: Application Scenario Expansion
PYUSD, issued by another payment giant PayPal, takes a different path. Backed by a massive user base, its start was not particularly impressive, with market capitalization once stagnating below $200 million.
It was not until May 2024, when it expanded to Solana, and again at the end of last year when it entered payment scenarios such as YouTube creator payouts and Visa cross-border remittances, that its scale rapidly climbed. This means that a payment brand's user base does not automatically translate into stablecoin scale; it must be realized through on-chain ecosystems, application scenarios, and layer-by-layer implementation.
U: Trading Ecosystem-Driven
U, backed by the Binance ecosystem, continues the crypto-native route: directly entering the liquidity heartland of CEXs and DeFi. On its first day of launch, it integrated multiple DeFi protocols including Aster and PancakeSwap, followed by Binance listing mainstream trading pairs and launching zero-fee campaigns, scaling through trading demand and liquidity mining.
Its characteristic is relatively high on-chain activity, achieving daily trading volumes of hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period, with market capitalization surging to $1.6 billion. The cost is that growth is highly dependent on trading incentives, with relatively weak retention and stability.
OUSD: Consortium Resource Tilting
OUSD represents a fourth model: initiated by a consortium of payment giants, card networks, and exchanges, rapidly scaling through targeted capital injection from founding partners. Its advantages are a high starting point, abundant resources, and high institutional trust; its shortcomings are also relatively obvious: lacking C-end-oriented DeFi incentive schemes and lacking spot trading pair support from top-tier CEXs, the liquidity flywheel has not yet formed.
In other words, OUSD has solved the cold-start problem of "from 0 to 800 million," but the growth "from 800 million to 8 billion" still depends on real payment, trading, and lending scenarios for support.
Stablecoin Business Model: Circle's Net Profit Only 7%, How Does OUSD "Earn While Sitting"?
More noteworthy than growth is the stablecoin business model. Many people assume stablecoins are a great business of earning interest spreads while sitting idle, but Circle's latest financial report lays bare the books of the stablecoin sector.
In the first half of this year, Circle recorded approximately $1.4 billion in revenue, but profits are not as generous as imagined. Breaking down the cost and profit per $1 of stablecoin issued:
59 cents to channels: $819 million used to pay distribution partner shares and transaction costs—for every $1 earned, approximately 59 cents goes to the channels that help it acquire customers;
34 cents invested in infrastructure: $473 million reinvested in compliance qualifications, infrastructure, liquidity support, and network development. Stablecoins are an "asset-heavy" business—anti-money laundering, reserve audits, cross-chain verification, and interbank settlement channels are all rigid cash expenditures;
7 cents net profit: ultimately approximately $103 million in net profit, with only 7 cents of pure profit per $1 of revenue.
A more hidden cost is redemption liquidity. To ensure round-the-clock, near-instant two-way fiat settlement and prevent runs under extreme market conditions, Circle must deposit enormous low-interest buffer capital at major clearing banks and bear high inter-institutional fund transfer costs. This portion of costs is not separately listed but is also eroding profits.
In practice, OUSD will also face a similar cost structure. Its underlying issuer is Bridge, with custodians including BlackRock and Bank of New York Mellon, facing regulatory requirements and fund settlement standards no less stringent than Circle's. Anti-money laundering monitoring, reserve audits, interbank settlement, and cross-chain operations all cost money.
A rough calculation: based on $800 million in supply and a 5% annualized reserve yield, OUSD's annual gross reserve income is approximately $40 million. If the operator retains only 7% profit, the annual funds available to cover costs would be only $2.8 million, which clearly cannot support a complete compliance and operations system.
Not to mention interest rate decline risk: for every 1 percentage point drop in reserve yield, annual gross income at the same scale would decrease by $8 million. For stablecoins that survive on interest spreads, whether scale growth can offset interest rate declines will directly determine whether their business model is viable.
Beyond cost pressure, consortium-type stablecoins have another inherent weakness: the loyalty of distribution partners.
Among OUSD's founding partners, the leading distributors generally have "multi-homing" identities:
Coinbase is not only one of OUSD's initiators but also a major shareholder of USDC and its largest profit-sharing beneficiary;Visa has both joined OUSD's governance board and extensively uses USDC in underlying settlement to handle Visa Direct business.
For them, OUSD is merely an additional option, not the only choice. Whichever stablecoin offers higher profit sharing, a better experience, and stronger liquidity will attract channel resources. This kind of "mercenary-style" partnership can scale together in good times, but once cost contraction or diverging interests arise, channels may quickly pivot.
This is also the main contradiction in the second half of competition in the stablecoin sector: in the early stage, the contest was over whose reserves were more genuine and transparent; once the industry enters maturity, the contest is over compliance and liquidity cost control capabilities, as well as bargaining power over distribution channels.
Regardless, $825 million is undoubtedly a good start for a stablecoin that has been live for three weeks.
However, scale is only a ticket to entry, not a moat. The challenge OUSD faces next is whether it can build competitive use cases and channel ecosystem positioning based on the resources of giants.
Leading at the starting line is only a short-term advantage; only by proving out a profitable model will it have a chance to survive in the fiercely competitive stablecoin sector.