Hey, it’s Marc.

Circle stock fell more than 12% on Tuesday, its worst day in four months, and I think most of the coverage is about to miss why. The trigger was Open USD, a new stablecoin from a group of 140 companies that includes Stripe, Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, BNY and Google.

It’s built to do the one thing Circle does for a living: collect the interest on the reserves. Unlike USDC, it hands reserve income back to the businesses that distribute it and keeps only a management fee. The token is not live yet. The threat already is.

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What Happened

A consortium of more than 140 companies launched Open USD on Tuesday, a dollar stablecoin issued by an independent entity called Open Standard. Founding partners include Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard, Visa and BlackRock, alongside BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, U.S. Bank, Shopify, Google, IBM, Klarna, Chime, Fireblocks, Anchorage, MetaMask, Aave, Solana, Polygon and Ripple.

The model goes straight at Circle. Partners mint and redeem without fees, and the reserve income flows back to the businesses using it, minus a management fee. No single issuer controls it; the members share governance. Zach Abrams, who co-founded Stripe-owned Bridge, runs it as interim CEO, and it goes live later this year. And notice who isn’t in the room: USDC, USDT and PayPal’s PYUSD.