What RLUSD is
RLUSD is Ripple's dollar stablecoin. It launched in December 2024 after approval from the New York Department of Financial Services, and it is issued by a Ripple subsidiary that holds a New York trust charter. Reserves are held one to one in dollar deposits, short-dated US Treasuries and cash equivalents, with monthly third-party attestations. The token exists on two ledgers: as a native issued currency on the XRP Ledger and as an ERC-20 on Ethereum. Same issuer, same dollar, two separate supplies; moving between them takes the issuer or a swap.
How a token lives on the XRP Ledger
Ethereum tokens are contracts; XRPL tokens are entries in the ledger itself. An issuer account creates the currency, and every holder opens a trust line to that issuer for that currency. The trust line says "I accept up to this much RLUSD from this issuer". Your balance is recorded on that line. No trust line, no balance, and a payment of RLUSD to an address without one fails.
The issuer keeps powers the ledger enforces. It can freeze an individual trust line, freeze all of its trust lines at once, and, where the issuer has enabled the clawback feature, pull tokens back from an account. A regulated stablecoin issuer keeps these rights because its supervisor expects it to. On the XRP Ledger a freeze is a ledger flag, not a contract call, and you can see it on an explorer.
Reserves: the two practical gotchas
The XRP Ledger charges no gas in the Ethereum sense, but it locks XRP to prevent spam.
- Base reserve. An account must hold a minimum XRP balance to exist. Since December 2024 that minimum is one XRP.
- Owner reserve. Each object the account owns, including every trust line and every open DEX offer, locks a further small amount, currently 0.2 XRP.
So a fresh wallet that will hold RLUSD needs at least 1.2 XRP before it can receive any: one to activate, 0.2 for the trust line. Sending RLUSD to a brand-new address does nothing until that address has been funded with XRP and has set the trust line. Transaction fees are on top: a fraction of a cent, paid in XRP and burned.
Destination tags
Exchanges and custodians typically use one XRP address for all customers and separate them by a numeric destination tag. If a deposit address on a status page or an exchange shows a tag, include it; RLUSD with a missing tag lands in the shared account and needs manual recovery. Your own self-custody wallet does not need a tag. The details are in Destination tags and memos explained.
The DEX, the AMM and auto-bridging
The XRP Ledger has had a built-in decentralised exchange since 2012: order books between any two currencies, with orders placed by ordinary transactions. In 2024 an amendment added automated market maker pools alongside the order books. RLUSD trades there against XRP and against other issued tokens without a smart contract in the middle.
Two features are specific to XRPL. Auto-bridging means that if you trade RLUSD for another issued token and the direct order book is thin, the ledger will route through XRP automatically when RLUSD-to-XRP plus XRP-to-token gives a better price. Cross-currency payments let you send RLUSD and have the recipient receive XRP, or the reverse, with the conversion done through the DEX inside the same transaction. Settlement takes a few seconds.
RLUSD vs USDC on XRPL vs USDT
| RLUSD | USDC on XRPL | USDT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issuer | Ripple subsidiary, NYDFS trust charter | Circle; brought natively to XRPL in 2025, verify current liquidity | Tether, no US charter |
| On XRPL | Native issued currency | Native issued currency | Not natively; only via third-party bridges |
| Freeze | Trust-line freeze, clawback where enabled | Trust-line freeze | Contract blacklist on its own chains |
| Best for | XRPL DEX, Ripple payment corridors | Holders who want Circle's issuer on XRPL | Everything outside XRPL |
| Retail redemption | No; institutional partners | No; Circle Mint for businesses | No; verified customers above a minimum |
None of the three redeems for retail holders. Your exit is a market, whether the XRPL DEX, an exchange, or a swap service.
Use cases
- Payments on XRPL. Cheap, fast, and tag-aware; suited to paying a counterparty who already runs an XRPL wallet.
- Trading on the XRPL DEX. RLUSD gives the ledger a regulated dollar leg for its order books and AMM pools.
- Ripple's own products. Ripple uses RLUSD in its cross-border payment flows; that is Ripple's business, not something a holder needs.
- Ethereum DeFi. The ERC-20 version behaves like any other regulated stablecoin there.
How to get in and out without an account
XRP itself has a coin page, XRP, and dedicated pairs: XRP to USDT TRC-20, BTC to XRP, XRP to HYPE. RLUSD is available in the swap form on the homepage, on either Ethereum or the XRP Ledger.
- Fund a wallet with XRP first, for example with BTC to XRP: enter the amount and your XRP address, add a tag only if your wallet gives you one, click Swap now, send exactly the shown BTC, and the rate locks after two Bitcoin confirmations. The XRP covers the base reserve, the trust-line reserve and fees.
- In your wallet, add a trust line to the RLUSD issuer. Copy the issuer address from Ripple's official documentation or from a block explorer, not from a chat message.
- In the swap form, choose what you send and RLUSD on XRPL as what you receive, with your XRP address. Deposits of XRP lock after two confirmations.
- To exit, use the swap form with RLUSD as the asset you send and USDT TRC-20 or BTC as the payout, or sell RLUSD for XRP on the DEX and use XRP to USDT TRC-20.
Mistakes to avoid
- Sending RLUSD to an address with no trust line. It fails or gets stuck; set the line first.
- Leaving exactly one XRP in the account. The trust line needs its own 0.2 XRP on top.
- Mixing up the two RLUSDs. An XRPL wallet cannot receive the Ethereum version.
- Copying an issuer address from an unofficial source. A fake issuer can mint a fake RLUSD with the same ticker.
XRP → USDT (TRC-20)
BTC → XRP