CRCL plummeted, and many thought it was because another stablecoin had emerged.

In fact, what truly frightened the market was that Open USD changed the profit distribution mechanism of stablecoins.
In the past, the reserve earnings of USDC mainly went to Circle; in the future, Open USD hopes to distribute this portion of profits to ecosystem partners such as Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, and Stripe.
If you were a payment company, which one would be more profitable to promote?
So the market isn't selling today's USDC—it's repricing Circle's future profits.
Of course, it's still too early to talk about disruption. The biggest moats of stablecoins remain liquidity, trust, regulation, and network effects. Whether Open USD can truly threaten USDC depends on its implementation over the next year or two.
This is also why CRCL's decline isn't just about its stock price—it's about the market's expectations for its business model.