Tim Draper Backs $1.5M Seed Round for USPD: A Stablecoin That Can’t Be Frozen

Vienna — USPD, a new type of yield-bearing stablecoin designed to be unstoppable and fully transparent, has officially gone live on Ethereum mainnet with its first minted tokens. The launch is backed by a $1.5 million pre-seed round led by legendary investor Tim Draper, alongside Gateway Ventures and Zelda Ventures.

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USPD, short for United States Permissionless Dollar, aims to fix the core flaws of today’s $250 billion stablecoin market: opaque reserves, centralization, and the constant risk of asset freezes.

Breaking Away From the Old Model

Unlike USDC or Tether, USPD can’t be frozen and keeps all reserves visible on-chain 24/7. The stablecoin introduces a novel “Stabilizer” mechanism to remove volatility risk from end users. Here’s how it works:

Stabilizers — professional traders and institutions — provide their own capital to overcollateralize the system.
When a user mints USPD, Stabilizers add stETH to maintain at least 125% collateral backing.
If markets move against them, Stabilizers—not USPD holders—face liquidation.
The result: users hold a truly stable dollar, while sophisticated traders absorb volatility for profit.

“It’s stability without the burden,” said Martin Froehler, CEO and co-founder of USPD.
“The stablecoin market has grown massively, but users are still forced to choose between transparency and simplicity,” Froehler explained. “USPD delivers both. Don’t trust—verify. Every USPD is backed by stETH you can audit yourself, 24/7.”

Martin Froehler, CEO & co-founder of USPD
Thomas Wiesner, CTO and co-founder, added:

“We looked at why people lose money with stablecoins and realized the problem wasn’t the concept, it was the execution. By redesigning from first principles, we created a yield-bearing dollar that simply can’t hurt its users. USPD is non-custodial, unfreezable, and unstoppable.”

Tim Draper: “Crypto Should Replace Banks, Not Copy Them”

For Tim Draper, USPD represents the future of stable assets:
“Stablecoins are supposed to be the bridge between traditional finance and the crypto economy. But most of them operate like the old system — centralized control, opaque reserves, and freezable assets. The technology exists to do better. USPD is proof of that. Crypto isn’t about recreating banks, it’s about replacing them.”

Tim Draper
USPD is the brainchild of Froehler and Wiesner, who previously launched Morpher, an on-chain trading platform serving over 100,000 global users. Their experience with complex financial systems shaped USPD’s guiding principle: make it simple, make it transparent, make it unbreakable.

Looking Ahead

Positioned as public infrastructure for the decentralized economy, USPD is backed entirely by staked ETH, with reserves that are 100% on-chain, over-collateralized, and verifiable at all times. Unlike centralized stablecoins, it is non-custodial and unfreezable, ensuring no single entity can block user assets.

With its Stabilizer model shifting volatility risk away from holders, USPD’s mission is clear: to power a sovereign, censorship-resistant economy with an unstoppable and transparent digital dollar.