Korea's Wavebridge begins first local custody of Coinbase- and Visa-backed stablecoin OUSD

Wavebridge, a Korean institutional crypto custodian, has begun holding Open USD (OUSD), the dollar stablecoin built by a group including Coinbase, Visa and Mastercard, on behalf of corporate clients in South Korea. The company said on Oct. 27 that it had joined Open Standard, which designs and operates OUSD, as a network partner, and that it started OUSD custody on its institutional platform Wavebridge Prime on Oct. 15. Wavebridge described it as the first OUSD custody service in Korea.

Custody means storing and managing crypto assets in wallets on a client's behalf. Wavebridge Prime is a service for institutions and corporations only, run by Wavebridge, a registered virtual asset service provider in Korea, and handles both custody and brokerage on one platform. The company said institutional and corporate clients can keep OUSD in custodial wallets and that it plans to let them exchange it for other assets on the same platform.

Issued by a Stripe subsidiary, reserves managed by BlackRock and BNY

Open Standard is an independent company run jointly by multiple firms rather than controlled by any single one. According to Wavebridge, it is led by five companies — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa — with more than 200 financial institutions, fintechs and businesses worldwide taking part as network partners. The project was first unveiled in June, and issuance began on Sept. 30 on four blockchains: Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo.

Bridge, a Stripe subsidiary, issues the token, while BlackRock, BNY and Lead Bank manage the reserves. Bridge's reserve disclosure page, updated Oct. 27, showed 834.34 million OUSD in circulation and $836.34 million in reserve assets, about $2 million more than the supply. Cash made up 11.9% of reserves, and U.S. Treasuries and money market funds investing in Treasury bills with maturities of under three months accounted for 88.1%. Reserves are disclosed monthly, and attestation reports from a Big Four accounting firm have been posted through August.

Network partners pay no fees to mint OUSD or redeem it for dollars. Open Standard says on its website that nearly all reserve revenues are shared with companies that grow OUSD adoption. The token is separate from Origin Dollar (OUSD), a token with the same ticker from Origin Protocol.

After Paxos' USDG and 11 stablecoins, OUSD joins the lineup

On March 31, Wavebridge joined the Paxos-led Global Dollar Network (GDN) as its first institutional partner in Korea and announced plans for custody of the USDG dollar stablecoin. On April 27, it began custody of 11 stablecoins across six currencies: five dollar tokens (USDT, USDC, USDG, PYUSD and RLUSD), the euro-backed EURC, yen-backed JPYC, Singapore dollar-backed XSGD, Brazilian real-backed BRLA and BRZ, and Australian dollar-backed AUDD.

With OUSD, Wavebridge now has partnerships with Open Standard in addition to Circle and Paxos. The company said it is running several proof-of-concept (PoC) projects with major Korean financial institutions and card companies and is preparing a foreign exchange (FX) desk to buy and sell currencies through stablecoins. The plan is for corporate clients holding OUSD to be able to use it for trade payments and cross-border settlement once Korea's regulatory framework is in place.

"As a stablecoin designed directly and grown together by global payment networks and financial institutions, OUSD will become another practical channel for Korean corporate clients to access global payment infrastructure."

Jongwook Oh, CEO of Wavebridge (translated from Korean)

Retail investors cannot buy it on Upbit or Bithumb

The service is for institutional and corporate clients. As of Oct. 27, OUSD was not listed on the Korean won markets of Upbit or Bithumb. Upbit's won market lists dollar stablecoins including USDT, USDC, USDG, USDe and USDS, but not OUSD.

Among them, as of 5:30 p.m. KST on Oct. 27, USDT and USDC traded at 1,335 won on Upbit and USDG at 1,329 won. Compared with the won-dollar exchange rate at the same time (1,325 won), USDT traded about 0.7% higher. Over the previous 24 hours, Upbit's won-market trading value was about 68.4 billion won for USDT, about 800 million won for USDC and about 1.57 million won for USDG.