Cathie Wood says that USDO will hardly outperform USDT and USDC

The CEO of ARK Invest, Cathie Wood, said it is unlikely that new stablecoins will be able to surpass the established leadership of USDT, from Tether, and USDC, from Circle. According to the executive, studies developed by the firm indicate that the market tends to favor assets that have already achieved broad adoption, user confidence, and integration with different financial platforms.

According to Wood, stablecoins function as monetary networks. The greater the number of users, companies, and applications using a given asset, the more useful it tends to become, creating an effect that makes it difficult for newly arrived competitors to rise.

This assessment is based on research conducted by Lorenzo Valente, director of digital assets at ARK Invest. The study indicates that already established stablecoins accumulate important advantages, such as liquidity, acceptance among financial institutions, and use as collateral in various market operations.

In this context, the executive noted that recent initiatives, such as Open USD (USDO), will likely face obstacles to gain significant market share given the position already held by USDT and USDC.

USDO was presented at the end of last month by Open Standard, an organization led by Zach Abrams, cofounder of Bridge, a company owned by Stripe. The project was created with the proposal to offer an open infrastructure for the issuance and use of stablecoins aimed mainly at the institutional market.

The initiative brings together support from more than 140 companies. However, part of that list sparked controversy after Samsung Electronics, Shinhan Financial Group, and other South Korean companies said they had not formally agreed to integrate the consortium responsible for the project.

Among the backers of the launch are BlackRock, Visa, Stripe, Google, Coinbase, and DBS. The companies support a model that reduces the adoption costs of stablecoins by eliminating issuance and redemption fees, sharing a large part of the revenue obtained from the reserves among the participants, and establishing an independent governance structure.

The USDO launch is expected to occur by the end of this year. The proposal also aims to reduce reliance on centralized issuers and expand access for financial institutions to the stablecoin market.

The movement is taking place at a time of rapid growth in this segment. The stablecoins market already moves about US$ 308 billion, while large payments companies are expanding investments in blockchain-based solutions, including strategic acquisitions and new digital settlement services, increasing the competition for space among the main stablecoin issuers.