In This Newsletter
A New Stablecoin Consortium
New Banks on the Block
X the Everything App
A New Stablecoin Consortium
In June, more than 140 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase, Google, and Shopify, unveiled Open USD, a dollar stablecoin governed by a consortium rather than a single issuer. Banking Dive reports that the token, OUSD, will be operated by a new independent entity called Open Standard, led by founding CEO Zach Abrams, who previously cofounded Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe acquired in 2024. Under the model, partner businesses can mint and redeem OUSD with no fees and no volume caps, and they keep nearly all the earnings generated by the reserves backing the token, rather than the current industry standard, under which the issuer captures returns from reserve assets. The consortium expects to launch the stablecoin later this year, beginning natively on Solana before expanding to other networks.
Currently, the global USD stablecoin market has approximately $310 billion in market capitalization, with Tether and Circle remaining the dominant issuers of dollar stablecoins. TNW reports that equity markets priced the launch as a real threat to these incumbents, with Circle's shares falling about 15 percent in the two trading sessions following the announcement. The consortium model has been tried before. The Paxos-issued USDG, for example, has attracted only roughly $3 billion in market capitalization, a fraction of USD Coin (USDC)’s size, despite launching with backing from Kraken, Robinhood, and other exchanges.
The OUSD launch comes as stablecoin volume approaches $1 trillion in annual settlement and BNY analysts project the category could reach $1.5 trillion in circulation by 2030. However, Stablecoin Insider reports that despite the record transaction volume, the supply of stablecoins in circulation is down $10 billion from its May peak of $320 billion, potentially indicating a migration to yield-bearing tokenized dollars like Circle’s USYC, FT’s Benji, and BlackRock’s BUIDL. At the same time, major US banks have disclosed their own tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House, a reminder that competition in the tokenized dollar space is heating up.
New Banks on the Block
On July 10, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave Circle Internet Group final approval to open First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., which will operate as Circle National Trust. Circle applied for the charter in June 2025 and received conditional approval this past December. Circle National Trust will custody Circle's own USDC reserves. Under the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) charter, the bank will be able to extend custody services to outside banks and regulated derivatives organizations.
Circle's charter was one of five the OCC granted in a single action, alongside Ripple National Trust Bank, BitGo Bank & Trust, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos Trust Company. Circle and Ripple are receiving charters as “de novo” banks, while BitGo, Fidelity, and Paxos converted existing state trust charters into federal ones. While BitGo’s charter received final approval this summer alongside Circle, the charters of Ripple, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets remain in conditional status as they work through preopening requirements with the OCC, according to CoinDesk.
The space for stablecoin custody continues to attract new entrants following an OCC rule change that took effect April 1 and clarified that national trust banks can hold assets in nonfiduciary custody accounts. This change helped drive 11 firms to file charter applications in an 83-day stretch in early 2026, including Bridge (Stripe's stablecoin subsidiary), Crypto.com, Protego, Morgan Stanley, Payoneer, and Zerohash.
X the Everything App
X Money began rolling out to X users across the United States on July 27, as Elon Musk's long-stated ambition for an “everything app” moved out of invite-only beta. The product bundles a deposit account, high-yield savings options, fee-free peer-to-peer transfers, and a Visa debit card directly inside the social platform, PYMNTS reports.
X does not hold a bank charter, so deposit accounts sit at Cross River Bank, a New Jersey-chartered, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)-insured partner. X Payments currently holds money transmitter licenses in 41 states and Washington, DC, as it awaits licenses from New York and Massachusetts. The rollout has drawn active scrutiny in Washington. Senator Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, wrote to Musk in April, flagging consumer protection and financial stability concerns, as well as Cross River Bank's past FDIC enforcement actions in 2018 and 2023 for its lending practices.
According to Musk, an “everything app” in the style of China’s WeChat has been his vision since founding X.com in 1999, the company that later merged into PayPal, and resurrected after his acquisition of Twitter. Whether a social platform can succeed as a deposit-taking, yield-paying financial product at scale in the US market remains to be tested.