Ripple's RLUSD Stablecoin Hits $1B Market Cap, Partners with DBS and Franklin Templeton for Tokenized Fund Trading

Ripple's enterprise stablecoin RLUSD has achieved a significant milestone, reaching a market capitalization of $1 billion in under one year since its December 2024 launch. This positions RLUSD as the 10th largest USD-pegged stablecoin globally. The rapid growth is attributed to its regulated approach, being issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, a Ripple Labs subsidiary, under the supervision of the New York Department of Financial Services. RLUSD is backed 1:1 by US dollars, short-term Treasury bills, and cash equivalents.

In a major parallel development, Ripple has partnered with Singapore's DBS Group and global asset manager Franklin Templeton. The collaboration enables accredited and institutional investors to access tokenized money market fund trading and lending solutions using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). DBS's digital asset exchange, DDEX, will list Franklin Templeton's tokenized money market fund, sgBENJI, alongside RLUSD, allowing clients to trade between the stablecoin and the yield-generating asset.

The partnership is a strategic move to advance the adoption of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). DBS plans to explore using sgBENJI as collateral for bank loans via repurchase transactions, unlocking liquidity for investors. Franklin Templeton will tokenize its sgBENJI fund on the XRP Ledger, adding to the blockchain's growing portfolio of supported assets.

RLUSD's adoption is currently split, with approximately 80-85% of its utilization on the Ethereum network and the remainder on XRPL. This multichain strategy aims to maximize its reach within the DeFi ecosystem. The stablecoin's growth has positive implications for XRP, as every RLUSD transaction on XRPL incurs a small network fee paid in XRP, which is subsequently destroyed, creating a deflationary mechanism for the native token.

Ripple's recent initiatives, including a 2025 pilot with Mastercard, WebBank, and Gemini to settle credit card purchases using RLUSD on XRPL, underscore its focus on bridging traditional finance with blockchain technology. While RLUSD's market cap remains far behind giants like Tether's USDT ($183B) and Circle's USDC ($76B), its regulated compliance-first model and institutional partnerships are key differentiators in the competitive stablecoin landscape.