Open Standard, the new stablecoin company behind Open USD founded by Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams, pitched OUSD as a 140-company alliance across payments, banking, tech and crypto.
But now, some companies named in the launch list are reportedly saying the whole thing was much less formal than it looked.
- At least several Korean companies listed in Open Standard's June 30 announcement said there had been no official consultation with the OUSD issuer, Korean business outlet Chosun Biz reported Friday.
The report named Samsung Electronics, the South Korean tech giant, Dunamu, the operator of crypto exchange Upbit, Shinhan Financial Group, one of South Korea's largest financial groups, and Kbank, a Korean internet bank, among the companies raising questions about how they were presented as part of the Open USD consortium.
- A Samsung Electronics official told Chosun Biz that there had been "no official consultation" and that the company didn't know what role it would play in the consortium, according to a translated version of the report.
- Shinhan Financial Group, Dunamu and Kbank also said Open Standard had asked whether they were willing to participate in OUSD and that they simply said they would review it, but later found their names included as consortium members, Chosun Biz reported.
- One company official gave Chosun Biz an even more awkward version, saying the company learned from domestic news that it had been included in the OUSD consortium, after only responding lightly that it would "review it if it goes well."
That lands directly on the gray area The Coinformer flagged shortly after Open USD's first announcement.
Open Standard claimed in its announcement that "businesses across industries have signed up to use Open USD," but it didn't clearly define what "signed up" meant for each named company, The Coinformer reported earlier.
- Open Standard claimed that more than 140 businesses had signed up to use OUSD, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Samsung Electronics, Coinbase, Solana, and many others.
Gabor Gurbacs, founder and CEO of OpenAssets and an adviser to Tether and Hadron, said in an X post that he had heard a similar version from some companies on the list:
"Regarding the OUSD consortium logos, I also spoke to a few companies from the list as a number of them are clients of ours (OpenAssets) and they said they never signed or agreed to anything."
- In a follow-up post, Gurbacs added one company told him it had been told Stripe and Visa would change their terms so the new stablecoin would become one of the accepted assets, which could create a possible future way for the company to interact with OUSD.
As of press time, Open Standard made no public statements on the matter.