Origin Debuts OUSD, a Stablecoin That Works Like a Savings Account

Peer-to-peer commerce company Origin is announcing Origin Dollars, or OUSD, a stablecoin whose reserves leverage decentralized finance so that balances grow wherever it resides, no staking or account required.

OUSD will be backed one-for-one by the three big stablecoins on Ethereum: Tether's USDT, Circle and Coinbase's USDC and MakerDAO's DAI. Users can mint OUSD by depositing any of those three into Origin's new app, or they can just buy it on Uniswap.

Either way, the OUSD will just start growing in their wallet, no further action needed.

Returns will be driven back into OUSD, minting more OUSD that will be distributed proportionally to all the wallets that have it.

To start, the team expects returns to be in the single digits as its Compound deposits earn both yield and fresh COMP; other pools will be added as OUSD grows.

To get OUSD started, "As a company, we'll put in probably a few hundred thousand," Fraser said.

OUSD will also be integrated into all the stores in Origin's DShop, its ecommerce platform.

As noted in the OUSD announcement post, "For merchants that have traditionally been skeptical of receiving cryptocurrency payments, being able to accept a yield-bearing instrument that beats traditional savings accounts is a powerful motivator."

If Origin ever invested in a pool that somehow went south, such as through a hack or a fatal error, then it would have to remove OUSD from circulation, but that's why it's starting with Compound and expanding cautiously.

Liu is confident that OUSD should get to double-digit yields soon, the firm just needs to grow the pool so it can cordon off some of the "More exotic strategies" into smaller pools, he explained.