Ripple’s OpenUSD Move: Payment Infrastructure Push or XRP Value Catalyst?

Ripple has joined the OpenUSD (OUSD) consortium as a launch integration partner, placing itself inside a stablecoin initiative backed by more than 140 companies across payments, banking, fintech, and crypto.

However, according to crypto analyst WrathofKahneman, there’s a catch: OpenUSD will be launching on Solana, Stellar, Base, and Polygon, but not on the XRP Ledger, which has left traders asking what Ripple will actually get out of the deal and whether XRP could benefit at all.

Ripple Joins OpenUSD as Questions Swirl Around XRP

In a July 1 thread on X, WrathofKahneman described OpenUSD as a consortium-backed dollar stablecoin designed to solve pain points for businesses by enabling free minting and redemption and removing volume limits. It will also distribute reserve earnings to partners after deducting management fees.

According to Open Standard, the independent entity that will govern the token, OpenUSD, will go live later this year, with Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, Google, and Bybit among the companies backing it.

The analyst argued that the project is in part an anti-USDC play engineered by Stripe. Recall that Stripe bought Bridge earlier this year specifically for its OCC bank charter, and per WratheofKahneman, OpenUSD will let Stripe “get out from under Circle by creating neutral infrastructure and shared economics.”

They think that positioning makes OpenUSD dangerous for Circle’s margins, since a stablecoin where every partner feels like a co-owner is a hard thing to compete against with a traditional single-issuer model.

As for Ripple, the industry observer doesn’t think the company had much choice.

They also noted that Ripple’s business would be fine, even if it lost some RLUSD profit to the new stablecoin. And speaking of RLUSD, the analyst said there is only a small overlap, given that OpenUSD is built for the broader economy, while RLUSD is primarily used for settlements within Ripple’s own stack.

On XRP, WrathofKahneman was a bit more uncertain, suggesting that the worth of the Ripple token requires value coming into the ledger, and it may only be affected if OpenUSD is eventually issued on XRPL.

The market watcher also flagged the presence of Coinbase in the group despite its deep USDC ties, saying it showed platforms are hedging against getting boxed into a single stablecoin economy.

Competition Moving Toward Shared Infrastructure

OUSD is entering a market where stablecoin issuers and payment firms are increasingly competing over infrastructure instead of individual tokens.

For instance, earlier this month, Mastercard expanded support for several stablecoins, including RLUSD and USDC, across networks such as XRPL, Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, and Base. According to the company, the move was to position itself as a neutral infrastructure provider rather than backing one issuer.

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