Ripple made two moves on Thursday to support its dollar-backed stablecoin, $RLUSD, at a time when the token’s monthly transfer volume has fallen by 25%.
Ripple Mint: Simplifying Stablecoin Issuance
The first move is the launch of Ripple Mint, a platform that lets institutional customers create, redeem, bridge and track $RLUSD through a web dashboard or direct integration. Previously, minting $RLUSD — issuing new tokens when a customer deposits dollars — meant arranging it directly with Ripple and waiting on a manual process. The new APIs let firms trigger minting and redemption automatically from their own systems and track each transaction from dollar transfer to onchain settlement.
Ripple has also expanded $RLUSD’s reach beyond the $XRP Ledger and Ethereum onto the XRPL EVM sidechain, Base, Optimism, Ink and Unichain, widening the number of networks where the token can circulate.
Investment in Notabene: Expanding Payment Rails
Separately, Ripple announced a strategic investment in Notabene, a compliance network. This deal places $RLUSD inside Notabene’s business-payments platform, putting the token in front of institutions positioned to send and receive it. So, while Mint is designed to make $RLUSD simple to create and manage, Notabene is built to get it moving through institutional payment rails.
That gap between issuance and actual usage is exactly the point, given where $RLUSD sits right now. The token has a market value of about $1.5 billion, according to data from RWA.xyz. That makes it one of the larger regulated stablecoins, though still a fraction of Tether and Circle’s USDC. Its supply is divided almost evenly between the $XRP Ledger, which holds roughly $877 million, and Ethereum at about $643 million.
Mixed Metrics: Holders Up, Transactions Down
The trajectory is mixed. Data assessed by CoinDesk shows that $RLUSD’s holder count and active addresses have climbed sharply over the past month, up 6% and 70%. That’s a sign the user base is broadening quickly. But its market cap slipped almost 5% over the same 30 days, and monthly transfer volume fell about 25%, from roughly $14.6 billion to $11 billion. More wallets are holding $RLUSD while less money is moving across it. A stablecoin that is accumulating holders but not transactions is being treated more as something to own than something to use.
$RLUSD is issued by Standard Custody & Trust, which holds a limited-purpose trust charter from New York’s financial regulator. That compliance credential is what Ripple leans on to court banks in a market where regulatory clarity has become the main battleground.
