XRP has lost more than 27% of its value over the past eight months, in stark contrast to RLUSD - Ripple’s seven-month-old stablecoin - which surged 1,278%. That growth propelled RLUSD straight into the top ten stablecoins by market capitalization.
The irony of the native token’s declining value comes as decentralized exchange (DEX) volume on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) actually surged 79% year-over-year. Daily transactions also rose 21% to 2.4 million activities, even as the number of active accounts on the network shrank by 40%.
Institutions Shun Volatility
When JPMorgan processed treasury settlements through Ripple infrastructure, the bank selected RLUSD for cash positions rather than using XRP. This preference for eliminating volatility was also shared by entities like Mastercard, BlackRock, and Convera, which all favored stablecoins as their preferred choice.
RLUSD’s rollout across major exchanges has unfolded in rapid succession: Binance launched its market in January 2026, followed by OKX on April 29 and Gate.io on June 15. The stablecoin’s supply is also listed on South Korea’s four dominant digital asset platforms - Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit.
In early 2026, only 18.4% of RLUSD supply was issued on XRPL, with the majority hosted on the Ethereum network. That distribution has now reversed: 58.9% of the supply, or $963 million, is processed directly on XRPL, leaving the remaining $1.1 billion running on Ethereum.
Displacing the Old Value Proposition
Ripple’s stablecoin offers three-second settlement times and cuts costs by 40% to 70% compared to the traditional SWIFT network. These technical features are powered by the exact same ledger as XRP, but with price certainty - a volatility-free advantage that undermines XRP’s institutional pitch from the past decade.
Ripple also signed a deal with a payment processor handling $190 billion in annual volume. At the same time, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a working paper utilizing XRPL to build cryptographic proofs for validating data integrity.
For long-time XRP holders, this shift in corporate preference highlights a sobering reality: Ripple’s infrastructure has proven reliable for processing global financial transactions, but the system can function seamlessly without driving value to its native token.
Reported by crypto.news.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
