Ripple’s RLUSD Stablecoin Surges Past $500 Million as Ripple
July 11, 2025 | by Sophia Vance

RLUSD Blasts Through $500 Million — and Ripple Aims Even Higher with a U.S. Trust-Bank Charter
By Sophia Vance | July 11 2025
In the span of seven short months, Ripple’s enterprise-grade stablecoin RLUSD has morphed from a carefully engineered product launch into a half-billion-dollar force. The market-cap odometer clicked past $500 million this week, thanks in no small part to its fresh integration with Transak’s 8.3 million-user fiat on-ramp network. (Cointelegraph)
The $500 Million Milestone—Why It Actually Matters
Let’s keep perspective: Tether’s USD₮ hovers north of $110 billion, while USDC is flirting with $70 billion. So half a billion could look trivial—unless you zoom in on velocity. RLUSD already settles roughly $10 billion in daily on-chain transfers, giving it a velocity of 22×—the highest among the top-ten stablecoins. At that clip, every RLUSD token turns over more than twenty times per day, an efficiency ratio normally reserved for high-frequency payment rails, not static dollar substitutes. (WebsCrypto)
The milestone also validates Ripple’s multi-chain gambit: RLUSD is natively issued on both the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and Ethereum. By straddling the world of TradFi integrations (think global banks tapping XRPL for settlement) and the liquidity-rich DeFi trenches on Ethereum, RLUSD enjoys a dual-network flywheel that many incumbents can’t easily replicate.
How RLUSD Grew So Fast
1. Regulatory Credibility from Day One. Ripple launched RLUSD under a NYDFS Limited Purpose Trust Company charter, openly publishing monthly reserve attestations. When you’re competing against issuers that sometimes post PDFs weeks late, on-time transparency is an edge.
2. Institution-First Distribution. The token’s first listings—Uphold, Bitso, MoonPay, Archax—were deliberately B2B-heavy. Once liquidity firmed up, consumer-facing ramps like Transak and LMAX came in, pushing RLUSD into 64 jurisdictions. (XT Blog)
3. Real-World Payment Hooks. Early enterprise pilots moved RLUSD across RippleNet corridors in Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines, shaving FX settlement windows from T+2 down to sub-hour finality. Those same corridors are now quoting RLUSD spreads tighter than their USDC equivalents—a compelling arbitrage for OTC desks.
The Charter Play—Regulatory Judo at the Federal Level
This week Ripple applied for a National Trust Bank Charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), alongside a separate application for a Federal Reserve master account. (American Banker) The move is part regulatory moat, part liquidity unlock:
• Reserve Efficiency. Direct access to the Fed’s real-time payments network would let Standard Custody & Trust (Ripple’s issuing subsidiary) sweep RLUSD reserves straight into the Fed’s overnight reverse-repo facility, turning today’s 4.8 % yield into a policy-rate-linked 5.15 % while cutting out intermediary banks. (WebsCrypto)
• Unified Oversight. An OCC-supervised trust bank answers the perennial “Is it federal or state regulated?” critique. RLUSD would sit under both NYDFS and OCC umbrellas—arguably the gold-plated combo that large corporates and asset managers demand.
• Capital Markets Optionality. A trust bank charter unlocks collateralized lending at the Federal Home Loan Bank system and removes state-by-state money-transmitter overhead—freeing up capital Ripple can re-deploy into liquidity incentives and trading-desk partnerships.
What It Means for Holders and Markets
Near-term: Expect tighter RLUSD-USD bid-ask spreads as market makers price in reduced redemption risk. Right now redemptions settle in roughly T+0.5; Fed master-account access could slice that to straight-through real-time gross settlement. That is catnip for arbitrageurs chasing fractional pennies across centralized and DEX order books.
Medium-term: If OCC approval comes through (history shows the agency rarely says no), RLUSD could become the first stablecoin whose reserves sit directly on the Fed’s balance sheet. That sets a new trust benchmark, forcing even behemoths like USDC to re-evaluate their own charter strategies.
Long-term: A bona-fide bank charter lets Ripple bundle custody, payments, and yield products under one roof—think white-label settlement services for fintechs that skip legacy correspondent banking entirely. RLUSD becomes the transport layer, and Ripple gets paid on flow, float, and FX. That’s a triple-threat revenue model the market hasn’t fully priced in.
Foresight: Scenarios to Monitor
• GENIUS Act Passage. The Senate’s stablecoin bill (still in conference) introduces federal reserve-ratio mandates and disclosure rules. Ripple is proactively mirroring those requirements via its charter bid—a hedge that could turn into a competitive moat once legislation lands.
• Exchange Depth. Watch for Binance.US and Coinbase listings. Both exchanges are already tight on USDC/USDT pairs; adding RLUSD gives them regulatory diversification and, more critically, a payments corridor aligned with Ripple’s institutional network.
• Cross-Border Payroll. Latin American SaaS firms are piloting RLUSD for on-demand payroll disbursements. If even 0.5 % of the region’s $45 billion annual freelancer payroll shifts to RLUSD, that’s an incremental $225 million float—and a giant leap in transactional volume.
Bottom Line
Stablecoins live or die by three factors: liquidity, credibility, and use-case density. RLUSD has just punched through the liquidity checkpoint at $500 million. The bank-charter pursuit is a credibility power-play that, if successful, will invite the sort of institutional capital still parked on the sidelines. Layer on Ripple’s payments rails and a two-chain footprint, and you have a contender primed to convert crypto’s most over-used buzzword—utility—into measurable cash-flow. For investors and practitioners alike, it’s time to add RLUSD to the core-watchlist, not the sidelines.

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