The stablecoin RLUSD under Ripple continued to expand its scale at the end of August. On-chain records show that on August 31, a transaction involving the minting of 11 million coins was completed, along with the destruction of another 11 million coins. According to CoinGecko, the circulating supply and market value of RLUSD on that day were approximately 2.37 billion US dollars.
Equal minting and destruction occur simultaneously.
Stablecoin issuance usually means that the issuer creates new tokens, but this does not directly equate to an increase in the circulating supply. These tokens may remain in a treasury address, or they could be used for transfers between institutional clients, or for balance adjustments between different blockchain networks.
Destruction means that tokens are withdrawn from the supply, which is commonly seen in redemption, treasury management, or cross-chain rebalancing. Looking at these two operations on August 31st, each one individually appears to be an expansion, but when combined with destruction, these two transactions do not result in any net increase.
Ripple has not disclosed the identities of the relevant clients, nor has it explained the specific purposes of these two transactions. The current on-chain records can only confirm that the transactions took place, but they cannot directly prove that the demand from the new institution has been established.
Break through $2 billion within August
RLUSD was launched in December 2024, and within 8 months, its market value exceeded $2 billion. Ripple confirmed this progress on August 25th, stating that nearly $1 billion of that amount was issued on XRP Ledger.
- CoinGecko The estimated circulation is about 2.37 billion coins.
- The supply on XRP Ledger has exceeded 1 billion coins.
- The price remains basically around $1.
This means that the market value of RLUSD has increased, mainly due to an increase in supply, rather than price fluctuations.
Reserve disclosure remains a key focus in the future.
As of August 20, as displayed on the transparency page Ripple, the circulation scale of RLUSD reached 1.866 billion US dollars, with corresponding reserve funds amounting to 1.981 billion US dollars. This official data predates recent rounds of additional issuance and also precedes the market value of RLUSD surpassing 2 billion US dollars.
RLUSD is issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, which are subsidiaries of Ripple and are regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Ripple indicates that their reserves consist of cash and compliant cash equivalents, and are held in segregated accounts.
Deloitte issues an audit report on a monthly basis to verify the circulation volume and reserve balance. However, such reports are provided retrospectively and cannot provide real-time confirmation for each new coin minted or destroyed.
Currently, Ethereum and XRP Ledger are still the main circulation networks for RLUSD. Ripple has also expanded RLUSD to include Base, Ink, Optimism, Unichain, as well as XRPL EVM and sidechain. Since the update times for the data panels of each chain are not exactly the same, there may be discrepancies in supply statistics between different data providers.
The next reserve report will provide a clearer picture, especially after the scale of RLUSD exceeds $2 billion, it will be important to see whether the reserve assets continue to exceed the circulating liabilities. For now, the relevant transactions have not shown a direct impact on the price of XRP.
