Still, he argued that the Circle’s 16% selloff on Tuesday went too far.
“I think it is an overreaction,” he told CoinDesk.
He pointed to Paxos’ Global Dollar Network (USDG), another consortium-backed stablecoin that shares reserve income with partners but has yet to gain significant market share. It has grown to a $3 billion supply since its launch in late 2024, lagging far behind USDC’s $73 billion and USDT’s $145 billion, according to CoinDesk data.
“The bigger question is how OUSD can convince consumers and end users to adopt them,” Lau said. “We don’t really know the answer until it is fully launched so that we can gauge the market cap and usage.”
Hadick also cautioned that building an industry consortium is rarely straightforward.
“Consortiums are hard and they break easily,” he said. “Incentives are broad and often misaligned.”
“So while the [Circle] stock selloff seems clearly reasonable, I also don’t expect this to be an easy or straightforward road for Open Standard and expect it to be harder to get to scale than expected,” Hadick added.
Details still missing
Others cautioned that the announcement left several important questions unanswered.
Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter, said Open Standard has assembled an impressive list of partners and is led by Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams, “who knows what he’s doing.”