RLUSD — Risk Report
Moderate risk · 7.0/10
Ripple’s regulated dollar, scaling into the banks. RLUSD is issued under a New York (NYDFS) trust charter, backed by cash, US Treasuries and cash equivalents held in segregated accounts at BNY Mellon, with monthly attestations. In its first roughly 18 months it scaled about 4x to a multi-billion-dollar supply while holding its peg cleanly, picked up a Binance listing, went live in Japan under JFSA approval, and started landing serious institutional integrations — Deutsche Bank, a Mastercard pilot. What keeps it at 7.0 rather than higher: it’s still young. It hasn’t been through a severe redemption run or a multi-cycle stress, and like its regulated peers it publishes monthly attestations rather than real-time proof-of-reserves.
| Yield | Exit method | Primary redemption | Age | Chains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | Sell on a CEX (Binance-listed) or DEX at peg; redeem 1:1 via the issuer | Mint/redeem 1:1 through Ripple’s regulated trust issuer; retail exits via market | Since Dec 2024 (~18 months) | Ethereum (roughly two-thirds of supply) + XRP Ledger; L2s via Wormhole in progress |
Summary
RLUSD is Ripple’s fiat-backed stablecoin, issued through Standard Custody & Trust Company, an NYDFS-regulated trust entity. It is backed by USD deposits, US Treasuries and cash equivalents held in segregated accounts at BNY Mellon, with monthly third-party attestations on the reserve — at about 107% of liabilities on Ripple’s own attestation, not 1:1.
Launched in December 2024, RLUSD has scaled to the multi-billion tier while holding its peg, and it now sits inside the regulated dollar cluster alongside PYUSD and GUSD. Along the way it picked up a Binance listing and began expanding institutionally: a JFSA-approved Japan launch via SBI, Deutsche Bank adopting Ripple’s payment infrastructure, and a Mastercard/Gemini card pilot.
On the supply figure, and how to read any RLUSD supply figure. Circulating supply was $1,589.6M as published by Ripple on 2026-08-06 — below the roughly $1.78 billion recorded on 2026-07-08, so the trajectory has flattened rather than continued toward $2 billion. That number is issuer-published and cannot be reproduced from an Ethereum read. RLUSD is issued natively on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, and the XRPL is not an EVM chain, so no Ethereum query returns the total. For scale: the Ethereum leg alone read 1,085,003,648 on 2026-08-23, roughly two-thirds of the issuer’s cross-ledger total — the two readings are seventeen days apart, so treat that split as approximate. The practical point is that a quoted RLUSD “supply” is either the issuer’s cross-ledger total or one chain’s slice, and they differ by about a third. This coverage has no XRP Ledger reader at all — not an unwired asset but a missing chain: the monitoring stack reads Ethereum and Solana natively, and has no XRPL capability anywhere in it. So the cross-ledger total rests on Ripple’s disclosure, and unlike most gaps in this coverage it cannot be closed by pointing existing tooling at the asset. Treat any RLUSD supply figure here as issuer-reported until that changes.
The 7.0/10 reflects a well-regulated, increasingly liquid stablecoin whose main residual risks are a still-short multi-cycle track record and attestation-versus-real-time-PoR transparency — not reserve quality or issuer strength. It’s worth noting that RLUSD, USDT, USDG and PYUSD all cluster around 7.0 for different reasons. RLUSD’s profile is issuer-strong and liquidity-solid but multi-cycle-record-short — close to the mirror image of USDT’s liquidity-strong, issuer-opaque profile.
1 · Stability — 7.0
This is the honest limiter, and it’s the single biggest reason RLUSD sits at 7.0 rather than higher despite a clean record and strong regulation. RLUSD is about 18 months old.
Scaling roughly 4x to a multi-billion supply while holding peg is a real, positive signal — it says the reserve and redemption operations work at scale, not just at launch size. But it is not the same thing as being tested through a severe redemption run or a genuine market crisis. USDC has been through one (the March 2023 Silicon Valley Bank scare, when it briefly depegged and then recovered); USDT has been through a decade of stress episodes. RLUSD has been through neither. How it handles its first genuine redemption run is a real, open question — and the answer isn’t in the data yet.
2 · Backing — 7.0
⚠️ The reserve is over-collateralised, not 1:1. Ripple’s attestation reports roughly 107% of liabilities in USD cash, US Treasuries and cash equivalents, held in segregated accounts at BNY Mellon under NYDFS oversight, with monthly attestations.
That surplus does not lift the Backing axis, and the reason is worth stating. 7% of headroom is real, but Ripple publishes no asset-composition breakdown — the attestation gives a total, not a split between cash, bills and equivalents by maturity. A larger number you cannot decompose is not the same evidence as a smaller number you can, which is why this axis holds at 7.0 rather than rising toward the fully-disclosed cohort. Note also that “backed 107%” and “redeemable 1:1” are different claims: the redemption terms below are unchanged and correct. This is a conservative, high-quality composition — the same regulatory regime that governs PYUSD and GUSD, and a genuine strength of the asset.
The knock relative to USDC is twofold and modest: attestations are monthly and point-in-time rather than continuous real-time proof-of-reserves, and RLUSD has a shorter operating history than the incumbents. Neither is a red flag on reserve quality — the composition itself is exactly what you want in a fiat-backed dollar — but both are reasons the backing score is 7.0 rather than higher.
3 · Liquidity & Exit — 7.0
This is materially better than a year ago. RLUSD now carries a Binance Tier-1 listing plus other venues, with daily volume in the $100M+ range, so large exits no longer hinge solely on issuer redemption — deep CEX liquidity is available at the peg. Institutions can mint and redeem 1:1 directly with the regulated issuer.
The remaining caveat is on-chain depth. DEX-native liquidity still trails USDC and USDT and is fragmented across XRP Ledger, Ethereum and the newer L2 deployments, so very large on-chain-only exits still benefit from routing through a CEX. For DeFi composability specifically, the Ethereum-side liquidity is what matters, and that is where the bulk of supply lives — roughly two-thirds of the cross-ledger total.
4 · Dependencies — 6.5
A narrower counterparty set than the larger dollar tokens, and verification that is periodic rather than continuous.
⚠️ Reserve verification is attestation-based rather than real-time proof-of-reserve. This axis prices what a holder can check between attestations — and between them, the answer is the issuer’s word. That is normal for a regulated issuer and it is still a dependency: the gap is time, not competence.
⚠️ RLUSD has two native rails and this assessment has read one. The Ethereum side is enumerated below; XRPL has never been read. XRPL holders additionally depend on XRPL liveness and its validator set, and any bridged L2 representation adds messaging and transceiver operators on top. ✅ A dependency set enumerated on one of two rails is a measured subset, not a completeness claim, and it is recorded that way rather than as a clean result.
⚠️ Not priced here: Ripple’s regulatory posture or its attestor’s identity. Those sit on Issuer.
5 · Contract & Admin — 4.0
The expensive quorum guards the code; the cheap one guards the money — and no delay stands in front of either. Measured 2026-09-11 against the token’s own role constants:
| power | terminal | quorum |
|---|---|---|
| Upgrade code | 0x863c8754c298d3efec3863f2a46f1c71a355ce6c | 7 |
| Default admin | 0x66fc2d9e4897cf3886a340a4cabc23cca2ac6a0e | 7 |
| Pause and clawback | 0x83f7f1c6a1547afe2841943f428cf6ff28541fa9 | 2 |
| Mint | 0x97e9d0b0bcbe86e1e230b0ffd3a5f1f9b8428591 | 2 |
| Burn | 0x1073d55dfb892ed86151015402db8b1cdb6ede78 | 2 |
⚠️ Two signatures can mint, burn, globally pause, or claw back a named holder’s balance. Seven are needed to change code. ✅ 4.0 rather than lower because quorum 2 is a real quorum — this is not the any-of-1 shape — and rather than higher because there is no timelock anywhere, so quorum is the only bar there is.
⚠️ Pause and clawback are the same contract. They read as two controls and are one: a single pair of signatures halts transfers globally and force-transfers a specific holder’s balance.
⚠️ These terminals are verified-present, not proven complete. The token reports AccessControlEnumerable as false and getRoleMemberCount reverts — so the contract cannot be asked “who else holds this role.” An empty result from that question means the question is unsupported, not that no other holder exists. Another terminal would not appear in the table above.
These are Ripple MultiSign contracts, not Gnosis Safes — quorum() is the correct accessor and getThreshold() reverting is what discriminates the type. Ethereum only; XRPL authority is unread.
6 · Issuer — 7.5
The issuer is the clearest strength here. Ripple is well-capitalized, with substantial corporate reserves and an institutional/payments orientation that aligns its incentives toward stablecoin reliability — a stablecoin failure would damage the far larger cross-border-payments business it’s built around.
Two things reinforce the picture. First, the SEC legal overhang resolved in 2024, removing a regulatory tail risk that had hung over the company for years. Second, RLUSD’s regulated reach has expanded fast since launch: a JFSA-approved Japan launch via SBI VC Trade, Deutsche Bank adopting Ripple’s payment infrastructure, and a Mastercard pilot through the Gemini Credit Card. Standard centralized-issuer controls apply — freeze, mint and burn — which is expected for a regulated model, not a negative surprise. There are no governance red flags. That combination of capitalization, resolved regulatory status, and institutional traction is what earns the issuer axis a 7.5.
What you actually earn
Nothing native — plain RLUSD pays no yield. You’d earn by lending it or putting it to work in DeFi and payments rails, not by holding the token. If you want a dollar that accrues yield in your wallet, RLUSD is not that product; it’s a settlement and reserve dollar.
Multi-chain expansion
Beyond Ethereum and the XRP Ledger, RLUSD is expanding to Ethereum L2s — Optimism, Base — via Wormhole NTT. This broadens reach and usefulness, but it comes with the usual trade-off: it adds cross-chain and bridge surface, and it continues to fragment DEX depth across more venues.
As with any bridged stablecoin, the deepest and canonical form of RLUSD lives on the native chains (Ethereum and XRPL). If you’re holding a bridged L2 balance, you’re taking on the bridge’s integrity as an additional dependency on top of the underlying token risk. This is a “know what you hold” note, not a reason to avoid the asset.
Audits & security
RLUSD sits under NYDFS oversight with monthly attestations on reserves and BNY Mellon custody. There has been no depeg and no exploit since the December 2024 launch.
⚠️ The issuer control set is stronger than “freeze/mint/burn” conveys, and the thresholds are the part this report has never carried. Measured 2026-08-20, CLAWBACKER_ROLE and PAUSER_ROLE are both held by a MultiSign at 0x83f7f1c6…1fa9, and the signature counts are not uniform:
| action | signatures required |
|---|---|
| Upgrade the contract | 7 |
| Claw back a holder’s balance | 2 |
| Mint | 2 |
| Burn | 2 |
⚠️ Every power that acts on a holder’s money is cheaper to exercise than the power that acts on the contract. Changing what RLUSD is takes seven signatures; taking tokens out of a specific wallet takes two.
And clawback is a stronger power than freeze, which is the one most readers will have in mind. A freeze immobilises a balance in place — the tokens stay yours and stop moving. A clawback moves them. For a regulated dollar this is an expected compliance capability rather than a defect, and the seven-signature upgrade path is genuinely conservative by comparison. But a holder is entitled to know that the balance-affecting powers sit behind the lowest threshold in the contract, not the highest, and this report has not said so until now.
The other residual risks are structural rather than reserve-quality problems: the short multi-cycle history, attestation-versus-real-time transparency, and the cross-chain expansion surface. None of these is reserve opacity — this is a transparent, well-regulated reserve. They’re the reasons a well-run young regulated dollar lands at 7.0 rather than at the top of the band.
Score breakdown
| Dimension | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Peg Mechanism | 7.0 | Standard fiat-backed 1:1 mint/redeem via a regulated trust company; has held peg cleanly through roughly 4x scaling, but still untested under a severe redemption run. |
| Backing | 7.0 | USD cash + Treasuries + cash equivalents at an NYDFS-regulated trust, segregated at BNY Mellon, monthly attestations; conservative composition, but attestation-based rather than real-time PoR and a shorter history. |
| Liquidity | 7.0 | ~$1.78B cap with a Binance Tier-1 listing and ~$100M+ daily volume — exit no longer hinges on issuer redemption. Held at 7.0 (not higher) because DEX-native depth still trails USDC/USDT and liquidity is fragmented across XRPL, Ethereum and the new L2s. |
| Issuer | 7.5 | Ripple — well-capitalized, institutional focus, NYDFS-regulated, SEC overhang resolved, and expanding regulated/institutional reach (Japan/JFSA, Deutsche Bank, Mastercard). No governance red flags. |
| Overall | 7.0 | A solid, increasingly liquid regulated stablecoin appropriate for a core position; residual watch items are the still-short multi-cycle track record and attestation-versus-real-time-PoR transparency. ⚠️ Held, and it sits +0.50 above its own axis mean of 6.50 — against the at-or-below convention applied elsewhere in this coverage. Held by decision on 2026-09-11 rather than left unresolved — the axis work that lowered the mean did not change any reserve, peg, liquidity or issuer fact. |
Who it’s for
Holders who want a regulated (NYDFS) dollar from a well-capitalized institutional issuer, who value the Binance liquidity and the expanding payments and bank integrations, and who are comfortable holding a stablecoin that is only about 18 months old. If you’re building around Ripple’s payments rails or want a regulated dollar that isn’t USDC, RLUSD is a reasonable core position.
Who should avoid
- Anyone who requires a multi-cycle-proven dollar — USDC and USDT have longer, stress-tested histories, and RLUSD simply hasn’t been through a severe run yet.
- Anyone who needs the deepest DeFi-native liquidity — on-chain depth still trails USDC/USDT and is fragmented across chains.
- Anyone who needs a censorship-resistant dollar — RLUSD is a freezable, centralized-issuer token by design.
What to watch
- First severe stress test. RLUSD hasn’t been through a genuine redemption run; how it handles the first one is the key open question for the whole thesis.
- Real-time proof-of-reserves. A move from monthly attestation to continuous PoR would strengthen the backing score.
- Cross-chain (Wormhole NTT) rollout. New L2 deployments add bridge surface; native Ethereum/XRPL remains the canonical form.
- Institutional integrations. Continued bank and payments adoption — Deutsche Bank, Mastercard, SBI/Japan — supports the issuer score and the liquidity trajectory.
This report is based on Ripple’s public documentation, NYDFS disclosures, monthly attestations (BNY Mellon custody), and market data through 2026-07-08. RLUSD is a young, centralized, freezable issuer token; its supply and multichain footprint shift over time, and it has not yet been tested through a severe redemption run. Corrections or attestation links welcome at info@tidresearch.com.
Revision history
- 2026-08-24 — reserve basis restated; no score change. Ripple’s attestation reports roughly 107% of liabilities in USD cash, US Treasuries and cash equivalents, held in segregated accounts at BNY Mellon under NYDFS oversight, with monthly attestations — over-collateralised rather than 1:1. Recorded alongside:
CLAWBACKER_ROLEandPAUSER_ROLEsit at the MultiSign0x83f7f1c6…1fa9, where upgrades need 7 signatures and clawback, mint and burn need 2.