Visa backs OpenUSD consortium to break Tether monopoly

Tether's multi-billion-dollar profit engine faces a structural assault from traditional finance.

Former Stripe executive Zach Abrams is launching OpenUSD, backed by a $1 billion liquidity commitment from Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, and Shopify. Unlike Tether, which hoards reserve interest, OpenUSD distributes revenue and equity to partners based on transaction volume. On Presidio Bitcoin Jam, Steve Lee noted that this structure allows Coinbase to capture high-volume enterprise flows that USDC cannot reach.

Traditional payment networks view the shift as vital self-preservation. By building governance into stablecoin rails, Visa and Mastercard preserve fee extraction rights even as transaction volume moves off card rails.

The push for programmable settlement is accelerated by machine-to-machine commerce. On TFTC, investor Jordi Visser told host Marty Bent that autonomous AI agents already generate token traffic at speeds surpassing human interaction. Machine workflows require instant around-the-clock settlement, making multi-day bank clearing windows unusable for software actors.

To capture this machine volume, Spiral developer Ben Carmen merged a pull request adding native Bitcoin Lightning support to the X402 payment standard. However, Steve Lee observed on Presidio Bitcoin Jam that technical standards do not guarantee merchant adoption. Merchants must still deploy Bitcoin infrastructure, giving stablecoins an immediate operational edge.

Distribution channels will determine which rails win machine traffic. Co-host DK warned on Presidio Bitcoin Jam that walled-garden agent platforms could force autonomous software into proprietary settlement systems unless open-source agent frameworks take hold.

Liquidity will ultimately settle where software actors encounter the least friction.