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What Is Ripple USD?

Ripple USD (ticker RLUSD) is a fiat-backed US dollar stablecoin issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, LLC, a wholly owned Ripple subsidiary that holds a limited purpose trust charter from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). It launched on December 17, 2024, after NYDFS approval, and each token is redeemable 1:1 for US dollars. Circulating supply was about 1.55 billion dollars as of early July 2026, placing RLUSD among the larger regulated stablecoins but far behind Tether and USDC.

RLUSD is not XRP, and this is the single most common point of confusion. XRP is the freely traded, floating-price digital asset native to the XRP Ledger, with a fixed supply of 100 billion tokens; see our separate guide, What Is XRP?, for how that asset works. RLUSD is a dollar liability issued by a regulated trust company. Its price is designed to stay at one dollar, its supply expands and contracts as customers mint and redeem, and it has no capped supply and no speculative upside. Within Ripple's own payments stack the two are complementary: XRP acts as a bridge asset for liquidity, while RLUSD holds stable value between the ends of a transfer.

The reserve backing RLUSD is held in segregated accounts and, according to Ripple's disclosures, consists of US dollar deposits, US Treasury bills with a residual maturity of three months or less, government money market funds, and overnight reverse repurchase agreements, in line with NYDFS guidance on dollar-backed stablecoins. In July 2025 Ripple named The Bank of New York Mellon as the primary custodian of the reserve. Deloitte, an independent US-licensed CPA firm, publishes monthly attestation reports on the amount of RLUSD in circulation and the composition of the reserve fund. Ripple's transparency page reported roughly 1.66 billion dollars of reserve assets against 1.55 billion dollars of circulating RLUSD as of July 9, 2026.

Regulatory coverage has widened since launch. The Dubai Financial Services Authority recognized RLUSD as an approved crypto token for use in the Dubai International Financial Centre in June 2025. In December 2025 Ripple received conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to form Ripple National Trust Bank, which is intended to manage the RLUSD reserve and perform collateral trustee services, putting the stablecoin business under both state and federal trust supervision. In June 2026 Japan's Financial Services Agency cleared RLUSD for distribution by SBI VC Trade, making it the first token approved in Japan under the "Type 4" electronic payment instrument category.

RLUSD was issued natively on two chains from day one: the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. The dual-chain design is deliberate. Ethereum gives RLUSD access to the deepest pool of DeFi protocols, custodians, and ERC-20 tooling, while the XRP Ledger gives it three to five second settlement, fees of a fraction of a cent, and a direct path into Ripple's institutional payment corridors. Because both versions are minted by the same issuer against the same reserve, a holder can redeem either for the same dollar. On Ethereum, RLUSD is an ERC-20 at contract address 0x8292bb45bf1ee4d140127049757c2e0ff06317ed; on the XRP Ledger it is an issued currency from the account rMxCKbEDwqr76QuheSUMdEGf4B9xJ8m5De, which requires holders to set a trust line. Ripple has since extended RLUSD to Base, Optimism, Ink, Unichain, and the XRPL EVM sidechain, where it uses a different contract address, 0x8d58c0c60b8d6b88fa98b291a646db34d0f98258, rather than the Ethereum one. Always take the address for your chain from Ripple's own token addresses page rather than assuming the Ethereum address works everywhere.

The balance between the two main chains has shifted sharply. For most of 2025 the large majority of RLUSD sat on Ethereum. Issuance moved toward the XRP Ledger through 2026, and on June 26, 2026 the XRP Ledger supply overtook Ethereum for the first time. By mid-July 2026 roughly 860 million RLUSD were on the XRP Ledger against roughly 660 to 680 million on Ethereum, a split of about 56 percent to 44 percent. The shift is partly redemptions on the Ethereum side rather than pure growth, and the Ethereum supply has fallen in absolute terms since mid-2026.

Holders should understand the control the issuer retains. To satisfy law enforcement and court orders, and to meet the requirements of the GENIUS Act signed in July 2025, Ripple can freeze RLUSD on both chains and claw tokens back from an account. On the XRP Ledger this uses the DeepFreeze and Clawback features; the Ethereum contract has equivalent administrative functions. This is normal for regulated stablecoins, but it means RLUSD is not censorship resistant in the way Bitcoin is. The other structural risks are ordinary counterparty risks: the value of the token depends on the reserve actually existing, on the solvency of the custodian bank, and on redemption remaining open. RLUSD has not suffered a depeg or a reserve shortfall to date, though monthly attestations are a narrower assurance than a full financial audit.

Getting Started With Ripple USD

RLUSD behaves like any other regulated dollar stablecoin. The main decision is which chain to hold it on.

  1. Step 1: Decide between the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. The XRP Ledger is cheaper and faster for payments; Ethereum has broader DeFi and custody support.
  2. Step 2: Set up a wallet for that chain. On the XRP Ledger you will need to fund the account with XRP for the reserve and set a trust line to the RLUSD issuer before you can receive tokens.
  3. Step 3: Acquire RLUSD on an exchange that supports your chosen chain, then withdraw it to your wallet.
  4. Step 4: Use it for payments, transfers, or as a stable place to park value. Institutional users can redeem directly with the issuer for dollars; retail users generally redeem by selling on an exchange.

How to Get a Ripple USD Wallet?

Any wallet that supports the XRP Ledger or an EVM chain can hold RLUSD, provided it lets you add a custom token or trust line.

Xaman

Xaman, built by XRPL Labs, is the most widely used XRP Ledger wallet. It handles trust lines, so you can add RLUSD and trade it on the ledger's built-in decentralized exchange. Remember that an XRP Ledger account needs a small XRP reserve to stay activated.

MetaMask

MetaMask holds RLUSD as a standard ERC-20 on Ethereum, and also on Base, Optimism, Unichain, and Ink. Add the token by pasting the contract address for the relevant network, and take that address from Ripple's token addresses page, because the Ethereum contract and the one used on Base, Optimism, Ink, and Unichain are not the same.

Hardware Wallets

Ledger devices support both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, and can be paired with Xaman or MetaMask so private keys never leave the device. This is the sensible option for larger balances.

Exchange and Custodial Accounts

Many holders simply leave RLUSD on the exchange or payment platform where they bought it. That is convenient but means you do not control the keys, and you are exposed to the platform's solvency as well as the issuer's.

Ripple USD Resources

How to Buy Ripple USD?

Be clear about what you are buying. RLUSD is a dollar stablecoin, not an investment product, and there is no separate RLUSD investment token. Buying RLUSD converts dollars into dollars on a blockchain; if the peg holds, you neither gain nor lose value, and RLUSD pays no interest to holders. If you are looking for exposure to Ripple's ecosystem as a traded asset, that asset is XRP, not RLUSD.

Centralized Exchanges

RLUSD launched on Uphold, Bitso, MoonPay, Archax, and CoinMENA, and has since been listed on Binance, Bitstamp, Bitget, and Bullish, among others. Binance carries the largest RLUSD trading volume, mostly in the RLUSD/USDT pair. In Japan, RLUSD is distributed by SBI VC Trade following approval from the Financial Services Agency, though that listing is Ethereum-only and carries a per-transaction cap of about one million yen. Ripple maintains a current list of exchanges, on and off ramps, and market makers on its partners page.

Decentralized Exchanges

On the XRP Ledger, RLUSD trades on the ledger's native order book decentralized exchange and in its automated market maker pools, typically against XRP. On Ethereum and the other EVM chains it trades on decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and Curve, mostly in stablecoin pairs against USDC and USDT. On-chain liquidity is thinner than on the major centralized venues, so large swaps can incur meaningful slippage.

Latest Ripple USD News

Ripple has pushed RLUSD as the settlement asset for its institutional payments business rather than as a retail product. RLUSD was integrated into Ripple Payments in April 2025, starting with cross-border providers including BKK Forex and iSend, and Ripple has continued to route enterprise flows through it. In June 2026 Mastercard added RLUSD to the stablecoins it supports for settlement across several blockchain networks, including the XRP Ledger, and the SBI partnership brought RLUSD to Japan under a new regulatory category.

The other running story is the migration of supply to the XRP Ledger, which passed Ethereum in June 2026 and has held the lead since. Ripple frames this as evidence that RLUSD is being used for payments on the ledger it was built for; skeptics point out that part of the gap comes from Ethereum redemptions rather than net new demand, and that XRP's price has not obviously benefited from RLUSD's growth. Ripple's transparency page and the monthly Deloitte attestations remain the best sources for the current supply and reserve position.