Mizuho turns bearish on stablecoin issuer Circle, citing Open USD competition

Japanese investment bank Mizuho downgraded Circle (CRCL) to underperform from neutral and slashed its price target to $50 from $85, arguing that OpenUSD’s business model threatens the stablecoin issuer’s long-term economics.

Circle shares were trading 0.6% lower at $62.63 at publication time.

Open USD, a dollar-backed stablecoin unveiled June 30 by the Open Standard consortium, “could fundamentally alter CRCL’s business model, which relies on retaining a large portion of the treasury yield to drive revenues,” analysts led by Dan Dolev said in the Tuesday note to clients.

The consortium counts more than 140 partners, including Mastercard (MA), Stripe, Coinbase (COIN) and BlackRock (BLK).

USDC has also lost momentum in recent months, with its circulating supply falling to about $73 billion from nearly $80 billion in March. The decline comes as the stablecoin market has shrunk by roughly $10 billion since May amid softer crypto trading activity and growing competition from newly regulated issuers.

Unlike Circle’s USDC model, which captures reserve income before sharing a portion with partners such as Coinbase and Binance, Open USD charges a small operating fee and distributes most reserve income to issuers and distributors, the analysts said.