Circle's CRCL Slips 24% as OUSD Debut Sends Wall Street Analysts Reaching for the Sell Button 🪙

Circle's publicly traded stock came under renewed pressure this week after the launch of Open USD (OUSD), a rival stablecoin backed by more than 140 companies including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY and Coinbase. Shares of CRCL fell 24% to $60.46 following the announcement, extending a slide that accelerated after the stock was removed from several Russell Growth indexes. Open Standard, the consortium behind OUSD, disclosed its revenue-sharing framework alongside the launch, a structure analysts said could compress Circle's margins on USDC and raise distribution costs.

Wall Street firms moved to reassess their forecasts in the days that followed. Mizuho cut its price target on CRCL to $50, citing the new revenue-sharing arrangement and higher distribution expenses tied to OUSD competition. JPMorgan separately trimmed its earnings expectations for Circle and Coinbase, pointing to revenue-sharing adjustments on USDC balances held on Hyperliquid. The combination of a new competitor, lower analyst targets and reduced index weightings has weighed on the stock since the OUSD unveiling.

Insider selling has added to the pressure. Circle President Heath Tarbert has sold approximately $30.8 million worth of company stock since June 2025, according to filings reviewed by market participants. The disposals come as Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, navigates its first full quarters as a publicly listed company following its listing earlier this year.

Circle has not publicly commented on the OUSD launch or on the insider transactions. The company continues to position USDC as one of the largest dollar-pegged stablecoins by circulation, with ongoing distribution partnerships and regulatory engagement in multiple jurisdictions. Circle executives have previously stated that competition in the stablecoin market is expected to intensify as more payment networks and asset managers introduce tokenized dollar products.

The OUSD consortium has framed its model as an open, interoperable alternative designed to share economics more broadly across its member institutions. Whether the revenue-sharing approach gains traction with payment processors, wallets and exchanges will likely shape how analysts model USDC's fee income and Circle's path through the remainder of the year. For now, CRCL's price action reflects the market's recalibration as it digests both the new entrant and the downgrade cycle from major banks.