Liquidity, not logos, is the main defense
WuBlockchain translated a commentary by @LorenzoARK arguing that Open USD, or OUSD, is not irrelevant but that the market may be overstating its near-term threat to USDT and USDC. The piece says stablecoin competition is not decided by reserve-income sharing alone. It depends on liquidity, user habits, collateral acceptance, integration depth, brand recognition, market depth, settlement flows, and the reluctance to disturb systems that already work.
That is the core argument behind the author’s view that Tether and Circle are widely misunderstood. In this framing, the moat around USDT and USDC is not their logo or marketing reach. It is the fact that both coins are already embedded across trading, settlement, collateral management, and risk workflows.
The article also says OUSD will comply with the GENIUS Act, which means it cannot distribute yield directly to users. In the author’s view, that matters because much of the discussion around OUSD assumes it will create a fundamentally different yield-bearing product for end users. Instead, the model described in the piece is one where reserve economics are shared with the platforms and businesses that distribute and use the stablecoin.
The author adds that Circle may already be one of the issuers most willing to pass economics to platforms and, indirectly, to users.
The OUSD pitch and where the author sees the limit
According to the commentary, the strongest bull case for OUSD is that alliance members will have a direct incentive to integrate it deeply into their own businesses because they can share in the economics. Without claiming access to the actual terms, the author sketches a hypothetical structure in which Open Standard takes a 25 basis point management fee, while each participant keeps 100% of the net interest margin generated by OUSD balances on its platform, network, or protocol.
On paper, that looks compelling. The problem, the author argues, is that these companies already extract value in other ways, and in many cases their main businesses rely on liquidity and network effects built around USDT, USDC, other stablecoins, or fiat currencies. Reserve income can be attractive, but only if chasing it does not put a much larger revenue stream at risk.
That is why the piece keeps returning to one point: stablecoin network effects come from liquidity networks built over time. They are reinforced by exchange pairs, collateral frameworks, DeFi integrations, market-maker workflows, settlement use, and accounting conventions. Once that structure is in place, migration costs rise sharply.
Why Binance is the key case study
The article calls Binance the strongest case study and, at the same time, one of the strongest counters to the OUSD narrative. Binance once had its own branded stablecoin, BUSD, whose supply reached about $23 billion before the New York State Department of Financial Services, or NYDFS, required issuer Paxos to shut it down in February 2023.
The author then points to current USDT balances cited for major Asian exchanges: about $45 billion on Binance, about $4 billion on Bybit, and about $9 billion on OKX. In that telling, Binance remains one of Tether’s most important strongholds. USDT is still the dominant quote currency across a large part of the offshore exchange system for buying BTC, ETH, and SOL, and for opening large perpetual futures positions.
The article says USDT is deeply integrated into the deepest order books, the strongest trading pairs, the most active derivatives markets, and the workflows of major market makers and traders. That integration, not a partnership announcement, is what the author calls the real network effect.
A hypothetical revenue comparison
To explain why Binance has not moved aggressively to replace USDT with a more revenue-aligned stablecoin, the author presents a rough calculation and explicitly says the figures are based on on-chain data and assumptions rather than confirmed information.
In that estimate, Binance accounts for about 40% of global crypto derivatives volume. Using an average of $40 billion to $50 billion in daily volume over the cycle implies annual volume of roughly $10 trillion to $15 trillion. After VIP discounts and BNB rebates, the blended taker and maker fee rate is estimated at around 5 basis points, which would put annual revenue from perpetuals and futures near $5 billion.
For spot trading, the piece estimates Binance daily volume at about $8 billion to $10 billion, or about $3 trillion annualized. With a blended fee rate of 15 basis points, that would add another $5 billion. Other businesses such as Earn, lending spreads, margin interest, Launchpool, listing-related revenue, Binance Pay, staking commissions, float on customer stablecoin balances, and BNB ecosystem revenue are estimated to contribute another $5 billion to $7 billion.
On that basis, the author says Binance could still be a company generating about $17 billion to $20 billion in annual revenue in a bear market, with revenue in a bull market potentially closer to $25 billion. The commentary adds that a company of that scale and quality could plausibly be worth more than $200 billion.
The key comparison comes next. If Binance’s $45 billion in USDT were replaced with OUSD, and Binance received 90% of the yield, then at an average US Treasury yield of 3.8% the exchange could earn about $1.55 billion a year. The author’s conclusion is blunt: that may sound attractive, but it looks far less compelling if the tradeoff is putting a $25 billion revenue engine at risk.
The Circle example and the challenge for OUSD
The piece says this is not just theoretical. It cites reports from more than a year ago that Circle paid Binance a one-time $60 million and offered ongoing monthly incentives tied to USDC balances on the platform. Even so, the article says USDC supply on Binance stayed roughly around $5 billion and did not show meaningful growth.
For the author, that example suggests direct financial incentives by themselves are not enough to quickly reshape the stablecoin market. On an exchange, a stablecoin is not simply cash. It also serves as a quote asset, collateral asset, risk-management asset, treasury asset, and unit of account for millions of traders. Swapping out that layer carries real costs.
Alliance members do not want the same thing
The commentary closes by arguing that OUSD’s roughly 150-member alliance spans very different types of businesses, from payments and fintech to banks, crypto infrastructure, and consumer technology. Those members do not monetize stablecoins in the same way.
The author breaks the landscape into two broad models. One is balance-sheet or AUM-style monetization, where companies benefit from idle balances, deposits, or float. That group may care deeply about net interest margin linked to stablecoin supply. The other is turnover monetization, which includes payment networks, processors, remittance firms, and e-commerce platforms that earn from transaction flow rather than idle balances. Those businesses may care more about reliability, cost, compliance, speed, reach, and user experience than about reserve income.
The article uses Aave and Western Union to illustrate the difference. A DeFi protocol can help create stablecoin supply by making OUSD useful as collateral or as a destination for liquidity. A payments company may simply move OUSD through its system and redeem it quickly at the edges. That can matter for transaction volume, but it is not the same as creating durable outstanding supply.
The result, in the author’s view, is that the alliance structure may be less powerful than it appears. Some members may drive supply, some may drive turnover, some may integrate deeply, and others may only test the product lightly or lose interest after the initial attention fades.
The final conclusion is that OUSD may still be one of the more interesting stablecoin experiments on the market, but the market may be overestimating how quickly shared economics can overpower established liquidity. The real question is not whether OUSD can offer partners better terms. It is whether those terms are valuable enough for partners to risk disrupting businesses already built around other fiat rails and stablecoins.