In the past two days, a piece of news has caused quite a stir in both the cryptocurrency ecosystem and the U.S. stock market.

It is reported that over 140 companies, including payment giants Stripe/Tempo, credit card giants Visa, Mastercard, asset management giant BlackRock, and cryptocurrency firms like Coinbase, have jointly established the Open Standard alliance, launching a new stablecoin called Open USD (OUSD).

This news has prompted a lot of comments on X, with many believing that Circle's position is threatened by this organization and the OUSD.

In a previous Q&A article, I shared my views on Circle:

I have not been very confident about its business model, so I have never bought its stock.

As of today, I still haven’t bought its stock, but I have maintained a certain level of interest in it, so upon seeing this news, I took the opportunity to sort out my thoughts again.

Although I have never bought its stock and still have many questions about it, I believe that this new stablecoin set up by such alliances will not significantly affect Circle's position.

I have two main reasons:

The first reason is a rule of thumb I have long believed in— in a new ecosystem, the top players are almost all native entrepreneurial teams from the new ecosystem, and very few come from the old world's veteran players.

In the stablecoin space, who are the native entrepreneurial teams?

In my view, the strongest three are USDT, USDC, and DAI/USDS.

It is also possible that new native teams will emerge in the future.

Besides that, companies like Stripe, Mastercard, etc., all belong to the old world's veteran players. They are likely to be constrained by “experience” and end up creating something that doesn’t quite fit.

The issuance of stablecoins has no technical barriers; the difficulty lies in usage and promotion. And this usage and promotion require a unique crypto ethos—something that the old players are often lacking, even to the extent of saying they fundamentally do not possess it.

So the threat to Circle is unlikely to come from these products created by old players' alliances.

The second reason is that generally speaking, most of these alliances are all noise and little action. While they may seem to come from different industries and gather different needs to create something more widely accepted, this kind of background can be an advantage in legislative aspects, but in the business field, it often becomes a disadvantage. This is because such loose alliances often find it difficult to genuinely and powerfully drive commercial implementation.

The future status of OUSD is likely to be: there will be application scenarios and practical use, but it will be hard to shake USDC's position.

So this news can actually be completely ignored.

I see that besides not fully understanding its business model, I also have a reserved attitude towards its team.

The founding team of Circle is undoubtedly excellent, but there is still a significant gap from my expectations.

This may stem from my particular obsession— the crypto ecosystem is a brand new world, and such a world is capable of providing unique conditions to give birth to great companies in history. Therefore, I have always expected to see some impressive figures and remarkable companies emerge in this ecosystem.

What constitutes “remarkable” is not easy to articulate, but what is “not so remarkable” is rather easy to discern.

What makes me feel that Circle’s team is “not so remarkable”?

It is the fact that it has issued its own layer of blockchain to create its own payment chain.

In the crypto ecosystem, the first easy thing is issuing tokens, and the second easy thing is creating chains.

Can issuing tokens be done? Of course, if necessary, one should issue tokens; but if it is not necessary at all, does the team have the courage to hold back and not issue tokens?

Similarly, can creating a chain be done? Of course, if necessary, one should create a chain; but if it is not needed at all, does the team have the courage to resist the temptation and not create a chain?

In the stablecoin field, it is very easy to think of creating one’s own blockchain because “stablecoins need payment channels,” so creating a chain becomes a “matter of course.”

Stripe created its own chain, Plasma is also a chain...

However, in my view, most of these blockchains that claim to be specifically used for payment are likely to be proven futile in the future. Calling them "useless" does not mean they have no merit; rather, many will have users, but their market share will be very small.

Veteran players from the old world can easily fall into the trap of creating chains in this space; if a native team fails to see this pit and jumps in, it shows that the team's foundational qualities are somewhat mediocre.

For a business, when it has ample resources and wealth, wanting to do anything is often easy, but being able to resist the temptation of doing certain things is often very difficult.

Unfortunately, Circle did not escape this tendency.

So in my eyes, it has become not so remarkable.

I do not yet fully understand its business model, and its corporate culture and qualities are not that attractive to me, so I have always been a bystander.

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