Ripple President Monica Long has revealed that the company’s upcoming US dollar stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), has already secured early customer commitments prior to its official launch. Speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Long emphasized that stablecoins are set to become a “massive trend” in the payments industry.
Ripple Is Waiting For Regulatory Approval
In an interview with CNBC’s Tanvir Gill, Long discussed the burgeoning market for stablecoins and their projected growth. “Stablecoins generally are about $170 billion in terms of market cap today, but that’s projected to be north of $3 trillion in just a few years because there’s going to be more demand drivers like payments,” she said. “We talk about Ripple, and we process more than $70 billion through assets, so this use case is going to be a massive trend.”
Long highlighted the increasing interest from major payment players in adopting stablecoins for transactions. She cited Stripe’s recent acquisition of Bridge as an example of traditional financial institutions leaning into the stablecoin space. “That’s a major payment player that’s leaning into using stablecoins for payments,” she noted.
When asked about competition with existing stablecoins, Long expressed optimism about market expansion rather than direct rivalry. “I expect the market to really expand,” she stated. “From our perspective, we have the use case; we have customers who already want to use stablecoins in payments, so we think that we can be a great provider.”
Regarding the launch of RLUSD, Long emphasized the importance of regulatory approval. “The Ripple US dollar [stablecoin is] not yet launched; we’re operationally ready, but really important to us is having approval from the regulators,” she explained. “The New York Department of Financial Services is reviewing our trust application.”
Long also addressed the potential for other fiat-backed stablecoins to gain prominence. “Since more stablecoins are pegged to the US dollar and most transactions of stablecoins happen in the US dollar, do you think that dollarization could be the way forward?” Gill asked. Long responded, “I believe so, and it comes back to use cases like payments where you think about traditional use cases and there’s real need for foreign exchange there. I do think that we’ll see new forms of fiat currency turned into stablecoins.”
She noted regional preferences in the adoption of stablecoins, particularly in Latin America. “There’s certain markets, like for example we see in Latin America, where there is a preference for a US dollar stablecoin, but I do think that the world will open up to more types of stablecoins,” Long said.
Following the event, Long took to X (formerly Twitter) to reiterate the industry’s focus on stablecoins: “Back from a fantastic week at Singapore Fintech Festival—on and off stage, everyone was talking about stablecoins. I spoke with Tanvir Gill on CNBC on the growing demand (ex: LATAM wants USD-based stablecoins, but EUR and SGD could very well solidify their own place in the market), and how Ripple USD (RLUSD) already has customers ready to use it once it’s publicly launched.”
At press time, XRP traded at $0.60.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com