Ripple said on Tuesday that RLUSD, its dollar-pegged stablecoin, crossed $2 billion in market capitalisation last week, with “close to $1 billion issued on the XRP Ledger.” Tracking service RWA.xyz put the total at roughly $2.02 billion as of August 25.
Read the second half of that claim twice. RWA.xyz shows about $962.9 million of RLUSD sitting on the XRP Ledger — and roughly $1.1 billion sitting on Ethereum. Ripple’s flagship regulated product, the one built to demonstrate that the XRP Ledger is where institutional dollars ought to settle, keeps most of itself somewhere else.
That is a choice, not an accident. Ethereum is where the DeFi liquidity, the custody integrations and the trading venues already are, and a stablecoin nobody can move is worth nothing. But it sits awkwardly beside the pitch Ripple has spent this year making to banks.
Twenty months, two billion dollars
RLUSD went live in December 2024 under a New York Department of Financial Services trust charter, backed one-for-one by dollar deposits and cash equivalents, with monthly attestations from an independent accountant. Getting from zero to $2 billion inside twenty months under that regime is the genuinely impressive part of the number. It is a compliance result at least as much as a product one.
On the XRP Ledger itself, the concentration is extreme. RLUSD now accounts for more than 90% of all stablecoin supply on the chain, which has pushed the ledger’s total stablecoin float past $1 billion and ahead of Stellar. That is a milestone and a dependency in the same breath: the health of XRPL’s dollar layer is now, functionally, the health of one issuer.
Fewer wallets, bigger cheques
The activity data is the part most write-ups skipped. RWA.xyz recorded roughly 84,630 holders and about 1.39 million transfers over the trailing 30 days, worth around $11.81 billion — transfer volume up close to 17% on the month. Across that same window, trailing 30-day active addresses fell about 25%, to roughly 8,252.
More money, moved by fewer addresses. That is what institutional usage looks like when it starts working: treasury desks and market makers cycling large balances instead of a long tail of retail wallets. It is also what a small and concentrated set of counterparties looks like, and on-chain data cannot tell you which of the two you are staring at. Transfer volume counts value moved between addresses. It does not count payments.
Our take: The $2 billion headline is the least interesting number here. Ripple has proved it can build a compliant dollar token quickly. What it has not proved is that the XRP Ledger is the reason anyone holds one — because when its own product votes with its feet, the majority walks to Ethereum. Watch the split, not the total.
What to watch
- Whether XRPL’s share of RLUSD crosses 50% and stays there, or whether Ethereum keeps the majority.
- Active addresses. If they keep falling while volume climbs, the float is concentrating — useful to know before anyone calls this mass adoption.
- Federal oversight. Ripple has been reported to be exploring supervision beyond its New York charter as the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin regime phases in.
- Permission delegation on XRPL, which Ripple was reported to be testing on August 22. It would split minting, compliance and security duties away from an issuer’s primary keys — the sort of plumbing banks ask about before they sign anything.
One footnote worth keeping separate: Ripple Prime, the company’s institutional arm, closed a $275 million senior notes offering on August 19. It does not explain the stablecoin’s growth and should not be read as the same story. It is aimed at the same customer.