🧐What is Circle falling off? Is its moat still there?
First the result: I think $CRCL is oversold in the short term, and if market sentiment continues to push it lower I would consider buying a portion,
But whether it can be held long‑term, I don’t have the confidence I once had and may need more observation.
Because fundamentals and moat have clearly undergone huge changes, which are exactly the things I write about below!
I’ve been researching a question for a while:
What truly constitutes a company’s moat?
Today the stablecoin track Open Standard announced Open USD, a new stablecoin backed by over 140 firms including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock and Coinbase.
Investors are evaluating the competitive threat it may pose to USDC.
The real‑world plunge it caused is a thought‑provoking moat discussion!
1️⃣ What exactly is $CRCL’s decline about?
Open Standard also says Open USD is designed so that:
Enterprises can mint/redeem at zero cost with no human‑scale limits; partners capture reserve‑asset yield of Open USD after a small management fee; governance is jointly decided by independent Open Standard and partner board.
The participant list includes Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, American Express, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Shopify, Coinbase, Solana, Base, Ripple and many other payment, finance, tech and crypto‑infrastructure firms; Stripe publicly said Open USD will be the default stablecoin for its commercial users;
The point is clear: Open USD isn’t trying to beat USDC on tech specs, but on distribution mechanics.
Circle’s core profit pool comes from reserve‑asset yield; Open USD’s slogan is to return more of that yield to traffic‑bringing partners.
In other words, OUSD intends to share the economic benefit that Circle previously kept with Visa, Stripe, Shopify, Coinbase, banks, wallets, exchanges and merchant ecosystems to quickly gain users.
The "USD 1:1 + on‑chain transfer" tech of stablecoins isn’t the deepest moat; the real moat lies in trust, regulation, liquidity, distribution, integration, use‑cases and economic incentives. Now the wolf is coming, and everyone sees another possible outcome.
So I think a representative takeaway is:
A single technology isn’t a moat; the ability to turn it into an irreplaceable product and profit stream for customers is the moat.
I’ve discussed this theme many times with friends, why Buffett…