Ripple Names Exchange Partners for Stablecoin RLUSD, Awaits NYDFS Approval

MIAMI, U.S. – Ripple named exchange and market maker partners for its upcoming dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, on Tuesday at the Ripple Swell 2024 conference in Miami, Florida. The firm also added ex-Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) chair, Sheila Bair, and David Puth, the former CEO of Centre, a consortium which set standards for USD Coin (USDC), to the advisory board for its stablecoin.

Ripple is an enterprise-focused blockchain service closely related to the XRP Ledger (XRP). The firm partnered with exchanges Bitstamp, Bitso, Bullish, CoinMENA, Independent Reserve, MoonPay and Uphold for distributing RLUSD at the start, while crypto trading firms Keyrock and B2C2 will serve as market makers for the token. Bullish is the parent company of CoinDesk.

The firm is waiting for regulatory approval from the New York Department of Financial Services for the public rollout of RLUSD, President of Ripple Labs, Monica Long, said in an interview with CoinDesk. “From our side, we are operationally ready,” Long added.

The announcement comes as Ripple laid out plans earlier this year to issue its own stablecoin vying for a piece in the $170 billion and rapidly growing market of stablecoins. Stablecoins are a key piece of infrastructure within the crypto economy, serving as a bridge between traditional government-issued money and blockchain-based digital assets. They are getting increasingly popular for cross-border transactions and as payment vehicles for goods and services, especially in the emerging markets.

With the stablecoin, Ripple aims to leverage the company’s established position for payments and be a key bridge for tokenization of real-world assets, Long told CoinDesk.

“For RLUSD and stablecoins generally, we definitely have validated the utility of them with payments,” Long said. “We’re also believers in this broader trend of real-world asset tokenization. When we think beyond tokenizing money to different instruments and capital markets like securities and bonds, real estate and other assets, you need a stable coin that’s trusted and very reliable, very robustly managed for on and offramps as well.”

RLUSD’s value will be backed by short term U.S. Treasuries, dollar deposits and cash equivalents, and is currently in test mode on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum networks. The company will release independent monthly attestations about its reserves, which will be prepared by San Francisco-based accounting firm BPM.

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs, said last month at Korea Blockchain Week that RLUSD could launch in “weeks, not months.”