The stablecoin distribution war: why issuing dollars stopped being the hard part

Minting a dollar on a blockchain is no longer a competitive advantage. The technology is understood. The reserve structures are standardized. The regulatory frameworks, at least in jurisdictions that have them, define what a compliant stablecoin looks like. What remains scarce is the infrastructure that moves those tokens from issuer to merchant to consumer and back, the distribution layer that determines whether a stablecoin is used or merely exists. Summary Open USD launched on June 30 with a consortium of over 140 partners including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Stripe, Coinbase, Google and Shopify, governed by an independent entity called Open Standard that distributes reserve earnings to its members. Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands and HKT began the phased rollout of HKDAP, a Hong Kong dollar backed stablecoin issued under HKMA licence through a B2B2C model with HashKey Exchange and OSL Group as authorized distributors. World Liberty Financial received conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank charter on August 14, enabling the Trump linked venture to issue USD1 directly instead of relying on BitGo as custodian; USD1 has reached roughly $4 billion in market capitali...