There’s No Stopping Stablecoins

In breaking news, the Ripple stablecoin RLUSD has just launched on the prominent, US-based Kraken Crypto Exchange. This is a positive adaption and liquidity step for RLUSD, growing 87% in the past month and having US$244 million minted. The past month’s transfer volume was US$860 million.

As of April , 2025, the following exchanges support RLUSD:

• Bitstamp

• Bitso

• Kraken

• LMAX Digital

• Zero Hash

• Bullish

• MoonPay

• B2C2

• Keyrock

• CoinMENA

• Archax

• Mercado Bitcoin

• Independent

• JST Digital

• Sologenic

• XRPL

Ripple has also integrated RLUSD into its Ripple Payments system, enhancing its utility for cross-border transactions and ONDO with its tokenised short-term US treasury product on BlackRock's BUILD platform. The company continues to work with additional exchanges and partners to expand RLUSD's accessibility and liquidity growth.

The expansion of exchange availability aligns with steady increases in the minting of the stablecoin on both the XRPL and Ethereum blockchains. Rumours of other blockchains adapting RLUSD have been present on crypto Twitter, with Charles Hopkinson of Cardano (ADA) having positive meetings with Ripple’s CTO David Schwartz.

The inevitability of stablecoins becoming multi-trillion-dollar assets is being talked about by some of the biggest players in the traditional finance system. Larry Fink of Blackrock and others from JP Morgan and Bank of America (Ripple partner) have been extremely vocal regarding stablecoins, its future use cases, and how they can link traditional finance and decentralised financial services.

In other related news, Axelar has launched the XRPL EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) in the test net. In collaboration with Peersyst, this has been a long-awaited improvement to the XRPL. What it means is that the XRPL will no longer be a silo blockchain, it will be accessible by developers and projects from over 60 other blockchains with interoperability key to bringing a world of smart contracts and decentralised financial services directly to the XRPL itself. This has been a crucial missing piece to increased activity on the XRPL thus driving adaption, network adaption and network value.

This seems to be aligning with US stable coin legislation touted to be passed soon with Republican-held majorities in the Congress and Senate. RLUSD is poised for wider market adaption and volume considering it has European MICA licensing, something USDT Tether is still struggling to achieve. The fact is that it will be tied into yielding products and have institutional custody readiness with Ripple's storage solution called “Ripple Custody”.

Are we about to see a rotation happen? Can Ripple with its storage, stablecoin, future XRPL smart contracts, interoperability, payment rails and institutional trust carve out a significant portion of the new financial system? Are we about to get the interoperability of the movement of money much like the interoperability of information-propelled email and internet searches? One thing is for sure, the crypto space is not standing still. How will Australia position itself to take advantage of this emerging technology? Will crypto become an election issue for us as it did for the US?

The technology is ripe to explode, let’s hope Australia is on board to take advantage.