RLUSD: Ripple’s dollar stablecoin on the XRP Ledger

Ripple launched RLUSD on Dec. 17, 2024. The token is a U.S. dollar‑pegged stablecoin issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, LLC, a Ripple subsidiary that operates under a limited‑purpose trust company charter from the New York State Department of Financial Services and a conditional federal trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

RLUSD is designed to trade at one U.S. dollar and is backed one‑for‑one by a segregated reserve of low‑risk, dollar‑denominated assets. The issuer’s regulatory license confines the reserve to cash deposits, short‑term U.S. Treasury bills, reverse repurchase agreements fully collateralized by Treasuries, and government money‑market funds. Reserve assets are held in segregated accounts with FDIC‑insured depository institutions or NYDFS‑approved custodians and are subject to monthly attestations by an independent U.S.‑licensed certified public accountant.

Approved institutional clients can mint RLUSD by depositing dollars with the issuer and receive newly created tokens. Redemption runs in reverse: clients return tokens to the issuer, which instructs partner banks to pay out dollars from the reserve and burns the redeemed tokens. Secondary‑market prices may rise above or fall below $1; institutional arbitrage through minting and redemption is designed to restore parity. Direct access to minting and redemption requires bank‑level Know Your Customer and Anti‑Money Laundering checks and ongoing sanctions screening.

RLUSD is issued natively on the XRP Ledger and on Ethereum. Bridged versions exist on OP Mainnet, Base, Ink, Unichain and an EVM sidechain for the XRP Ledger, allowing token movement across several blockchains while keeping native issuance under the issuer’s control. Standard Custody & Trust Company retains administrative powers over the token that include the ability to freeze accounts or blacklist wallets for compliance reasons.

Ripple integrated RLUSD into its payment services in 2025 to provide a dollar‑denominated settlement asset for cross‑border and institutional flows. Targeted use cases include cross‑border payments, faster institutional settlement than correspondent banking, trading pairs on exchanges, collateral for margin trading and settlement for tokenized real‑world assets.

Market metrics show RLUSD is smaller than the largest dollar stablecoins. As of July 2026, circulating supply figures put RLUSD at about 1.4 billion tokens, compared with roughly 184 billion for USDT and about 73 billion for USDC.

The structure of RLUSD places operational and custody responsibilities with the issuer and its partners. Holders remain exposed to centralized issuer risk, potential custody or reserve management failures, and the point‑in‑time nature of monthly attestations. Stablecoin rules and oversight continue to evolve, and changes to the regulatory framework could alter how RLUSD is issued, held or distributed.

Adoption of RLUSD will depend on institutional acceptance, onchain liquidity, and integrations with trading venues and payments infrastructure. Ripple markets the token as part of its payments and custody services and distributes RLUSD primarily to institutional clients that meet compliance requirements.