Morning Minute: Major New Stablecoin Launch Shakes Incumbents

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analyzes and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And cdamn our new daily news show with all the top stories in 5 minutes, available for download on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s most important news:

• Crypto majors are slightly red, Solana leads; BTC at $58.5k
• 140 companies are teaming up to launch Open USD, focusing on Circle and Tether
• CRCL shares fall 17% after the launch of Open USD
• Trump’s Disclosure Shows $1.2 Billion in Crypto Profits; $50 million+ in BTC holdings
• Citi cuts its 12-month BTC price target to $82,000 from $112,000, citing ETF flows, slow regulatory progress and DAT concerns

💵 Open USD launches with over 140 backers, focusing on Circle and Tether

Open Standard, a new company led by Zach Abrams, launched Open USD as a stable currency that the global money movement will go live later this year.

It has serious support from the biggest players in payments, finance and trade. More than 140 companies have signed up, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Shopify and DoorDash, in addition to 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 companies

• companies can mint and redeem coins for free without volume limits
• returning all income from the reserves to partners minus a small management fee
• is governed by a board of these partners rather than by one company.

That attacks the incumbents’ most profitable feature, since the real money in stablecoins is the return on the government bonds backing them, and Circle and Tether keep almost 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 shares losing 18% that day. And it’s pretty clear why. Much of the stablecoin growth story that Circle benefited from was based on corporate and institutional growth. Now these users will be heavily incentivized to use OUSD instead of 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 once it’s up and running…

🇺🇸Trump announces over $1.2 billion in crypto revenue

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

Most of the $1.2 billion in revenue came from two sources. Trump earned just over $635 million from his memecoin alone, almost entirely as royalties tied to a licensing deal with Celebration Coins. The TRUMP token launched on Solana days before he took office again in January 2025, shot to $75 within three days and a market cap of $75 billion dollars before being sold. Now it’s trading around $1.66 at a market cap of $394 million, down about 98% from its all-time high.

The other big chunk 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 more than $50 million in Bitcoin and between $5 million and $25 million in Ethereum, among other digital assets.

The disclosure once again raises the conflict of interest questions that are clouding the government. The president actively shapes US crypto policy, while his family benefits directly from the industry that governs these rules. It directly contributes to the fight against the CLARITY Act, with Democrats pushing to ban the president and his family from crypto companies as a condition for the bill’s passage. This new headline is sure to cause Democrats to dig in their heels, and the bill’s chances of passing fell 10% to 39% that day.

Unfortunately, we probably haven’t felt the full effects of that $1.2 billion in crypto revenue yet. Expect more pain to come…

🌎 Macrocrypto and markets

• Crypto majors are slightly red; BTC -1% at $58.5k; ETH -1% at $1,570; SOL +2% at $75; HYPE -5% for $62.60
• JUP (+16%)WBT (+14%) and XLM (+12%) were the leaders
• 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 by British investors for nearly $200 million in a new British lawsuit, according to Reuters, linked to claims involving the FCA
• Citi lowered its 12-month price targets for Bitcoin from $112,000 to $82,000 and ETH from $3,175 to $2,240, citing outflows, slow regulatory progress and concerns about DAT
• TD Cowen Cut Strategy’s Price Target by 35%, Citing Company’s New Framework Opening the Door to Bitcoin Selling
• The SEC opened a 60-day comment period on new ETFs, asking 27 questions about how it should handle funds built around crypto assets, event contracts and other non-traditional holdings, after pausing about two dozen ETF registrations for the prediction market
• Life investment management in New York partnered with Centrifuge for a tokenized bond fund, bringing one of America’s largest asset managers further into real-world assets on-chain
• CRCL was removed from various Russell Growth Indexes during the annual reconstruction process in June

Corporate bonds and ETFs

Meme coin tracker

• Meme leaders were mixed; DOGE even, SHIB even, PEPE -3%, PENGU +2%, TRUMP +3%, BONK even
• dog (+85%), Litter (+100%) and Testibull (+175%) led the movers on Solana
• Basic movers including Check (+21%) and REI (+27%)

📈 Numerous markets of the day

💰 Token, airdrop and protocol tracker

🚚 What’s happening in NFTs?

• NFT Leaders were largely flat; Punks -1% at 31 ETH, BAYC +1% at 8.82 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.45 ETH; Hypurr’s -3% on 217 HYPE
• Racerz (+47%) and MetaWinners (+20%) top movers
• The strong week for punk sales continued with multiple upstairs purchases in the past day, including a 100 ETH Cowboy sale