Ripple's stablecoin, RLUSD, grew 1,278% this year to a $2.32 billion market cap, while XRP dropped 27% over the same period. Institutions including JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Convera are settling through RLUSD instead of the token, and XRP Ledger activity keeps climbing even as the token's price does not.
RLUSD's market cap hit $2.32 billion with cumulative volume surpassing $9 billion, a 1,278% increase year to date. Over the same stretch, XRP dropped 27% to trade near $1.39. The token started the year near $1.90, slid to a July low of $1.06, then bounced to $1.55 in August before drifting back down.
RLUSD supply migrates to the XRP Ledger
RLUSD's supply on the XRP Ledger jumped from 18.4% of total issuance at the start of 2026 to 58.9% today, with $963 million now sitting on XRPL and $1.1 billion on Ethereum. As a result, the ledger's rising transaction volume increasingly settles in dollars, not in XRP. The XRP Ledger now processes 2.4 million daily transactions, up 21% year over year, and DEX volume has surged 79%.
Banks are choosing the stablecoin, not the token
Institutional integrations, including JPMorgan, Mastercard, Convera, and Interactive Brokers, have adopted RLUSD for settlement instead of XRP. Convera alone processes $190 billion per year in cross-border volume and now routes it through RLUSD. A payment processor weighing a token that dropped 27% this year against a dollar-pegged asset with the same settlement speed has little reason to hold the volatile one.
Fewer wallets, larger transactions
Active accounts on the XRP Ledger fell 40% year over year even as daily transactions and DEX volume climbed, pointing to fewer participants moving larger sums. Retail wallets that once drove XRP's price appear to be leaving or going dormant, while institutional flows through RLUSD fill the gap.
Meanwhile, the seven spot XRP ETFs approved in March 2026 have pulled in $1.68 billion in cumulative inflows, with August contributing $153 million to $159 million, the best month since launch. Yet on September 1, Ripple unlocked three escrow tranches totaling 1 billion XRP, out of 32.6 billion XRP still held in escrow with monthly unlocks of 1 billion tokens. That unlock pace outweighs the ETF inflows, keeping steady pressure on the token even as the network around it expands.
Source: crypto.news
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