XRP, the native token of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) network, surged during the U.S. afternoon hours on Tuesday as Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the company’s much-anticipated stablecoin obtained regulatory approval from the New York Department of Financial Services.
“This just in…we have final approval from NYDFS for RLUSD! Exchange and partner listings will be live soon,” Garlinghouse posted on X.
XRP rallied 10% following Garlinghouse’s announcement in a broader crypto market bounce, erasing today’s losses. The token was up 6.8% over the past 24 hours, outperforming bitcoin (BTC) and the broad market CoinDesk 20 Index. The XRPL network was developed by engineers who later established Ripple, and the company has long been associated with products and services using the token.
Ripple laid out its plans in April to enter the quickly growing stablecoin market with its heavily regulated, short-term U.S. government bond-backed cryptocurrency. Stablecoins are a key piece of infrastructure in the crypto economy, and increasingly used for global payments, which is one of Ripple’s business focuses. The two largest issuers, Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), currently dominate the almost $200 billion stablecoin market. The sector, however, is forecasted to grow to trillions of dollars over the next few years, and Ripple is vying for a piece of that.
With RLUSD, Ripple strives to leverage the company’s established position for payments services among institutions and serve as a key intermediary for real-world asset tokenization, Ripple President Monica Long told CoinDesk in an interview in October. Tokenization is a red-hot trend in crypto to place traditional financial instruments on blockchain rails for more efficient transactions.
RLUSD is in beta testing on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum networks. Ripple’s Long said earlier that the token has been “operationally ready,” only awaiting approval from regulators for the token’s public launch.
There are currently $41.7 million worth of RLUSD tokens on Ethereum and $10.4 million on XRPL, data compiled by analytics firm CryptoQuant shows.