Ripple said on Aug. 25 that its RLUSD stablecoin crossed $2 billion in market capitalization during the previous week, less than two years after its December 2024 launch.
RLUSD Supply Approaches an Even Network Split
Close to $1 billion of the circulating supply had been issued on the XRP Ledger, according to Ripple's official statement. CoinGecko subsequently placed RLUSD's market capitalization at approximately $2.11 billion, based on a circulating supply of about 2.1 billion tokens. Because RLUSD seeks to maintain a $1 price, its market capitalization closely tracks its circulating token supply. The milestone therefore reflects additional issuance rather than price appreciation.
Ripple initially launched RLUSD natively on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. On-chain figures around the milestone placed roughly $963 million on the XRP Ledger and approximately $1.05 billion on Ethereum. Ethereum therefore held a slightly larger share when the total passed $2 billion. This milestone builds on Ripple's broader ecosystem growth, including the XRP ETF filings that have drawn investor attention to the XRPL ecosystem.
New York Rules Govern RLUSD Reserves
Standard Custody & Trust Company, a Ripple subsidiary, issues RLUSD under a limited-purpose trust charter supervised by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Ripple says every token is backed by cash or permitted cash equivalents held in segregated reserve accounts. Eligible assets include short-term U.S. Treasury bills, government money market funds, overnight repurchase agreements and bank deposits. Ripple's transparency page showed $1.981 billion in reserve funds against $1.866 billion of circulating RLUSD as of Aug. 20.
The company publishes monthly independent attestations prepared by Deloitte. However, attestations are retrospective and do not provide real-time verification of reserves following every mint or redemption. This regulatory compliance approach mirrors the standards seen in the European stablecoin market, as demonstrated by the Revolut EURR launch under MiCA.
Institutional Projects Are Adding RLUSD Use Cases
Ripple markets RLUSD for payments, trading collateral, tokenized assets and institutional finance. The company has also backed a planned credit fund that would issue RLUSD-denominated working-capital loans to fintech and payments businesses. FXRP gained access to an RLUSD lending vault through Flare and Morpho, creating another use for the stablecoin in decentralized lending. Ripple has since expanded RLUSD beyond its original networks, with current documentation listing Base, Ink, Optimism, Unichain and the XRPL EVM sidechain alongside Ethereum and the XRP Ledger.
RLUSD activity on the XRP Ledger creates transactions that require small XRP fees. However, stablecoin issuance does not automatically create matching demand for XRP as an investment. Users can hold and transfer RLUSD without maintaining a large XRP position. The next figures to watch include monthly issuance, redemption activity, transfer volume, network distribution and updated reserve attestations. A sustained rise in external payments and settlement volume would provide stronger evidence of adoption than supply growth alone.
