We’re only halfway through the year, but Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, has made a serious entrance into the ranks of industry leaders.

While some of the company’s plans may have seemed speculative, its steps into the TradFi space are steadily being solidified.

Decisively Climbing The Ranks

RLUSD quickly made waves by being designed to be Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) compliant, the European Union’s regulatory framework for digital assets, as it processed over 33,000 transactions within its first 6-month test phase before being released.

The majority of the coins ($52.9M) were available on Ethereum, and the rest were minted on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) – $13.3 million. After being approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), the stablecoin was then officially launched late last December.

Initially available on MoonPay, Uphold Inc., CoinMena, and several other platforms, it’s now available on more well-known exchanges such as Kraken, Bitget, and Uniswap, to name a few.

By the end of Q1 of 2025, it had already amassed a market cap of over $244 million across both XRPL and Ethereum.

Further achievements did not lag far behind, as the product, pegged 1:1 to the dollar, was recognized by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) as a crypto token within the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), and by that time, the market cap was around $310 million.

Some of the latest news features the stablecoin being the first to be supported by a Swiss global bank, AMINA, which offers trading and custody services, along with the announcement that XRP is seeking a US banking license.

Earlier today, the company announced that it has chosen BNY Mellon to serve as the stablecoin’s custodian.

At the time of printing, the market cap of RLUSD stands at just above $500 million, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Although this is a significant milestone for a stablecoin that has been in existence for just over half a year, it still has a way to go to reach the heavy hitters, USDT by Tether and USDC by Circle, which boast capitalizations of $158 billion and $61 billion, respectively.

A Successful And “Failed” Acquisition by Ripple

Apart from the notable accomplishments in the stablecoin rankings, the company behind RLUSD has also made a significant purchase this year.

In April, Ripple acquired the brokerage firm Hidden Road in a $1.25 billion deal, marking one of the largest investments by the company and making it the only one in the crypto world to own and operate a multi-asset broker.

Hidden Road clears $3 trillion per year from over 300 institutional clients across markets, and RLUSD will be used as collateral for the prime products they offer.

Ripple was reportedly also eyeing acquiring Circle, the company behind USDC, for a deal valued at $4 to $5 billion, but it seemed the offer was too low.

The same report also noted that Ripple is “still interested” in the purchase. However, a post on X by Chris Brummer, a Georgetown professor, following a conversation with Circle’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, completely contradicts this, suggesting that such plans never existed.

“Brad was unequivocal – Ripple never pursued an acquisition of Circle. And while he wished the company well, it wasn’t something he was considering.”