Ripple USD liquidity surges as US CBDC push faces resistance

The US Senate is on track to pass a large housing bill banning central bank digital currencies, though liquidity around Ripple USD is still rallying. According to a Messari report, Ripple stablecoin had a value of $235 million on the XRP Ledger at the end of 2025. That figure has now risen to nearly $1.52 billion. 

The growth follows multiple new token issuances and increasing adoption of the stablecoin for settlements and DeFi activity within the network. Last week, Ripple’s RLUSD Treasury minted 69 million tokens on the XRP Ledger, its largest issuance to date. The tokens were reportedly transferred to the Gemini exchange.

The rapid increase highlights growing demand for privately issued digital dollars on blockchain networks. RLUSD is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar and backed by dollar deposits, short-term US Treasuries, and cash equivalents, positioning it as a regulated settlement asset designed for cross-border payments and institutional use.

Recently, both on XRPL and Ethereum, the Treasury has also been holding repeated multi-million-token mints and burns, such as a 20-million-token mint on February 27 and an about 10-million-token mint two days before.

Meanwhile, efforts to introduce a US CBDC are encountering major obstacles. In early March, the US Senate advanced a sweeping housing reform package that includes provisions restricting the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital dollar, with the proposal gaining strong bipartisan support.

Ripple collaborated with Securosys and Figment

In a Saturday X post, Representative Ralph Norman confirmed that they are moving forward with a ban on a CBDC. He remarked, “I’m proud to sign onto a letter urging House and Senate leadership to permanently ban a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Americans deserve financial freedom, not government-controlled money.”

Nonetheless, Ripple has been building up more partnerships and embracing other developments, according to Token Relations. The platform is partnering up with both Securosys and Figment to add new hardware security features and staking services in Ripple Custody. Securosys designs hardware security modules to provide Ripple with key management, both locally and via cloud services, while Figment supports staking on proof-of-stake blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana.

Moreover, Aviva Investors, a division of Aviva plc, is working with Ripple to digitize traditional investment funds on the XRP Ledger. 

More recently, Ripple also extended Ripple Payments’ capabilities to receive, hold, swap, and distribute payments in fiat currencies and stablecoins in more than 60 markets. So far, the new payment systems have helped push XRP and Ripple USD debates over the future of global payments.

On X, Panos Mekras, CEO and co-founder of Anodos Finance, even commented on the growing adoption of XRP Ledger consumer payment products. He noted, “With billions of dollars in XRP sitting idle, RLUSD liquidity accelerating, and over 7 million accounts, the XRP Ledger sits on a mountain of untapped economic energy.”

The executive further added that Ripple could unleash real-world potential in XRP Ledger liquidity and help people transact in XRP and RLUSD on a daily basis. He added, “By developing a financial super app and the ecosystem’s first self-custodial card, we are bridging the XRPL to reality. We aren’t just giving people a way to ‘off-ramp’, we are giving them banking with authority.”

Merkas also emphasized that above all, the mission is to bring digital assets to all, placing both XRP and RLUSD not on exchanges but into the global economy and into the hands of individuals.

Ripple is spreading RLUSD to Ethereum layer-2 solutions

In February, Ripple said RLUSD would transition to Ethereum layer-2 solutions next year. It also confirmed that the stablecoin would try the Wormhole interoperability protocol on Optimism, Base, Ink, and Unichain.

Optimism “is a key entry point, the company said — and its OP Stack falls under a Superchain, a way for scalable networks to share protocols and communicate via a communication layer.

Ripple SVP Jack McDonald also recently added that stablecoins are making DeFi and institutional adoption feasible again, with the company working to define its own final standard and to help bring regulatory compliance with blockchain efficiency right into line with what the company needs to see.

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