Morning Minute: Major New Stablecoin Launch Shakes Incumbents

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GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors are slightly red, Solana leads; BTC at $58.5k
• 140 businesses team up for Open USD launch, taking aim at Circle and Tether
• CRCL stock falls 17% in wake of Open USD launch
• Trump disclosure shows $1.2B in crypto profits; $50M+ in BTC holdings
• Citi cuts its 12-month BTC price target from $112k to $82k, cites ETF flows, slow regulatory progress and DAT concerns

? Open USD Launches With 140+ Backers, Taking Aim at Circle and Tether

Open Standard, a new company led by Zach Abrams, launched Open USD as a stablecoin for global money movement going live later this year.

It’s got serious backing from the heaviest hitters in payments, finance and commerce. More than 140 businesses signed on, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Shopify, and DoorDash, alongside much of crypto itself like Coinbase, Solana, Ripple, OKX, and Aave.

And its launch is a direct shot at Circle and Tether. Open USD gives all the power back to the businesses by

• letting businesses mint and redeem for free with no volume caps
• handing all the earnings on its reserves back to partners minus a small management fee
• being governed by a board of those partners rather than a single company.

That attacks the incumbents’ most profitable feature, since the real money in stablecoins is the yield on the Treasurys backing them, and Circle and Tether keep nearly all of it. Stripe’s president said Open USD will become the default stablecoin for businesses on its platform.

The market reacted strongly, with CRCL stock losing 18% on the day. And it’s pretty obvious why. A huge part of the stablecoin growth story that Circle benefited from was based on business and institutional growth. Now those users will be heavily incentivized to use OUSD over USDC. The bull case for Circle is the “rising tide” thesis, but that’s looking a bit shaky—at least right now. Expect OUSD to be a real stablecoin player as soon as it’s up and running…

?? Trump Discloses Over $1.2 Billion in Crypto Earnings

President Trump’s annual financial disclosure, released Tuesday by the Office of Government Ethics, revealed more than $1.2 billion in earnings from his crypto ventures in 2025. The report runs over 900 pages, and crypto sits among the largest line items in it.

The bulk of the $1.2B in earnings came from two sources. Trump earned just over $635 million from his memecoin alone, almost entirely as royalties tied to a licensing agreement with Celebration Coins. The TRUMP token launched on Solana days before he retook office in January 2025, rocketed to $75 and a $75B dollar market cap within 3 days before selling off. Now it trades around $1.66 at a $394 million market cap, down roughly 98% from its all-time high.

The other major piece was more than $588 million in net proceeds from token sales distributed by World Liberty Financial, the family’s DeFi and stablecoin venture. He also reported holding over $50 million in Bitcoin and between $5 million and $25 million in Ethereum, among other digital assets.

The disclosure re-raises the conflict-of-interest questions shadowing the administration. The president is actively shaping US crypto policy while his family profits directly from the industry those rules govern. It feeds straight into the CLARITY Act fight, where Democrats are pushing to bar the president and his family from crypto businesses as a condition for passing the bill. This new headline certainly will make the Dems dig their heels in the ground, and odds of the bill passing dropped 10% on the day to 39%.

Unfortunately, we likely haven’t felt all the effects of those $1.2B in crypto earnings yet. Expect more pain to come…

? Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are slightly red; BTC -1% at $58.5k; ETH -1% at $1,570; SOL +2% at $75; HYPE -5% at $62.60
• JUP (+16%), WBT (+14%) and  XLM (+12%) led top movers
• Oil -1% at $69; Gold even at $4,040
• Stock futures are slightly red after the strongest H1 in 5 years; DOW -0.2%, Nasdaq -0.4%
• Binance and CZ were sued for nearly $200 million by British investors in a new UK lawsuit, per Reuters, tied to claims involving the FCA
• Citi cut its 12-month price targets for Bitcoin from $112k to $82k and ETH from $3,175 to $2,240, citing outflows, slow regulatory progress and DAT concerns
• TD Cowen cut Strategy’s price target by 35%, citing the company’s new framework that opens the door to selling Bitcoin
• The SEC opened a 60-day comment period on novel ETFs, asking 27 questions about how it should handle funds built around crypto assets, event contracts, and other nontraditional holdings, after pausing roughly two dozen prediction-market ETF filings
• New York Life Investment Management teamed with Centrifuge for a tokenized bond fund, bringing one of America’s largest asset managers further into onchain real-world assets
• CRCL was removed from several Russell Growth Indexes in the annual reconstitution process in June

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mixd; DOGE even, SHIB even, PEPE -3%, PENGU +2%, TRUMP +3%, BONK even
• dog (+85%), Nest (+100%) and Testibull (+175%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included Check (+21%) and REI (+27%)

? Myriad Market of the Day

? Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

? What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks -1% at 31 ETH, BAYC +1% at 8.82 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.45 ETH; Hypurr’s -3% at 217 HYPE
• Racerz (+47%) and MetaWinners (+20%) led top movers
• The strong week for Punk sales continued with multiple above-floor buys in the past day, including a 100 ETH Cowboy sale