Headline: Ripple’s RLUSD won’t replace XRP, crypto bull argues — it could actually strengthen the ledger
Jake Claver, a well-known XRP proponent, says Ripple’s new RLUSD stablecoin shouldn’t be seen as a threat to XRP — it may help the XRP Ledger (XRPL) attract institutional dollar liquidity and ultimately reinforce XRP’s role as the network’s neutral bridge asset.
In a detailed thread on X, Claver addressed a recurring question in the XRP community: if RLUSD can move dollars in seconds, why keep XRP at all? His answer hinges on a simple distinction: RLUSD is a compliant settlement currency; XRP is a routing and liquidity asset that reduces friction between otherwise fragmented markets.
“RLUSD is not the finish line. It is the front door,” Claver wrote, arguing that institutions will come for a compliant digital dollar and then start asking bigger questions — about tokenized securities, instant settlement, and eliminating the traditional multi-day transfer window.
The port analogy
To explain why a neutral bridge asset remains necessary, Claver used the analogy of an old trading port where merchants arrive with different goods but rarely hold exactly what others want. With many assets, direct pairwise trading becomes impractical; markets instead rely on a common medium to match trades efficiently. On the XRPL, Claver says, XRP plays that “money changer” role: trades may appear as a single swap to users, but underneath they often route through XRP to provide the required liquidity and price discovery.
Example: tokenized Treasury to euro stablecoin
Claver gave a practical example: swapping a tokenized U.S. Treasury for a euro stablecoin may look like a one-step transaction to the user, but the swap can route through XRP behind the scenes. The user never sees the XRP leg, but XRP’s liquidity enables the trade to execute smoothly.
Why RLUSD won’t be a universal bridge
Claver laid out three reasons RLUSD is unlikely to displace XRP as the ledger’s primary routing asset:
- Issuer risk: RLUSD is issued and backed by reserves in a bank, which introduces counterparty, legal and operational risks tied to the issuer. XRP, he notes, is not minted by a single company and can’t be turned off by one entity.
- Neutrality and censorship resistance: A global routing asset ideally remains neutral. Regulated stablecoins must enforce sanctions, blacklists and regional rules, and can freeze tokens — features that suit a compliant dollar product but undermine a base-layer bridge asset.
- Liquidity architecture: Liquidity pools require two different assets. RLUSD can be paired against euros or tokenized treasuries, but it can’t occupy both sides of a market simultaneously. A routing layer needs a liquid, issuer-free, neutral asset — characteristics Claver says point to XRP.
Claver concluded that RLUSD is “perfect anytime both sides of a trade want dollars,” but many XRPL use cases won’t end in USD exposure, such as cross-currency treasury trades or lending in non-dollar currencies. In those scenarios, a neutral routing asset like XRP remains necessary.
At press time, XRP traded at $1.2628.
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