Ripple's USD-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, has celebrated its first anniversary by achieving a major milestone: surpassing $1 billion in market capitalization in November 2025. According to Jack McDonald, SVP of Stablecoins at Ripple, this marks one of the fastest and steadiest climbs in the regulated stablecoin sector, positioning RLUSD among the top five USD stablecoins.
The project's growth is attributed to a strong emphasis on compliance and institutional trust. A key development is the conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for Ripple's national trust bank charter. This, paired with its existing New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) license, creates what McDonald describes as a "gold-standard for enterprise-grade stablecoins."
Institutional infrastructure has been a major focus. BNY Mellon was selected to custody RLUSD's reserves, while Deloitte provides attestations for added transparency. The stablecoin's utility is being deepened through integration with real-world assets (RWAs). It now serves as a 24/7 off-ramp for BlackRock's BUIDL and VanEck's VBILL tokenized funds via Securitize. Furthermore, partnerships with DBS Bank and FTI Global enable repo trades for a tokenized money market fund using RLUSD.
Globally, RLUSD has secured regulatory recognition in key hubs including Dubai (DFSA) and Abu Dhabi (FSRA). To ensure future interoperability and unlock liquidity, Ripple is expanding RLUSD's presence to Layer 2 networks like Optimism, Base, Ink, and Unichain via Wormhole's NTT standard. McDonald noted this expansion "unlocks demand for XRP (wXRP) liquidity across the ecosystem."
