CoinDesk
Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin is positioning itself for a corporate-treasury market that the firm's stablecoin chief values at roughly $13 trillion in annual transactions, with circulation already climbing past $2.4 billion on a 50% surge over the past month. Senior vice president of stablecoins Jack McDonald told CoinDesk the opportunity sits inside Ripple Treasury, the business built around last year's $1 billion acquisition of treasury-management software provider GTreasury and its roughly 1,200 CFO and treasurer customers. Daily activity on RLUSD has more than tripled since the start of the year, reaching roughly $750 million a day last month from about $200 million in January.
Why it matters
The pitch is that corporate treasury workflows, cross-border subsidiary transfers and intercompany payments have lived entirely offchain, and stablecoins are the first infrastructure designed to actually move that volume. McDonald frames RLUSD less as a Tether (USDT) or Circle (USDC) rival on raw market cap and more as a utility layer stitched into payments, capital markets, custody and prime brokerage. Tokenized money-market funds with Franklin Templeton, lending workflows with DBS and collateral posting through Ripple Prime all sit on top of the same dollar rail, turning RLUSD into a working piece of financial infrastructure rather than a trading stablecoin.
Market impact
Europe is the next leg. McDonald said Ripple wants to offer RLUSD under the EU's MiCA framework through a dual-issuance structure, building on a Luxembourg authorization the firm already holds. Network expansion has been similarly targeted, adding Base, Ink, Optimism and Unichain while steering clear of what McDonald called "retail meme coin chains." With more than $300 billion of stablecoins now in circulation and banks launching their own deposit tokens, the corporate-treasury lane is shaping up as the next competitive battleground for the dollar stablecoin sector.
Frequently asked questions
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How big is RLUSD's circulating supply right now?
RLUSD has climbed past $2.4 billion in circulation, up more than 50% over the past month, according to Token Terminal data cited by CoinDesk. About $1 billion sits on the XRP Ledger and $1.4 billion on Ethereum.
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What corporate-treasury opportunity is Ripple actually targeting?
Ripple is targeting its Ripple Treasury customers, roughly 1,200 corporate treasurers and CFOs who process about $13 trillion in transactions annually through the GTreasury platform acquired for $1 billion last year, McDonald said.
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How is RLUSD being used beyond crypto trading?
RLUSD is the primary stablecoin in Ripple's payments business and is used in capital markets for the cash leg of transactions, settlement and collateral through Ripple Prime, the institutional brokerage built from the Hidden Road acquisition.
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What is Ripple's plan to bring RLUSD into Europe?
Ripple wants to offer RLUSD under the EU's MiCA framework through a dual-issuance structure, building on a regulatory authorization in Luxembourg the firm already holds, McDonald told CoinDesk.
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Which blockchains does RLUSD run on, and is it expanding?
RLUSD launched on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum and has since expanded to Base, Ink, Optimism and Unichain. McDonald said Ripple will be selective and is not chasing what he called "retail meme coin chains."
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