Ripple minted 14,394,224 RLUSD on the XRP Ledger this week, shortly after burning 10 million RLUSD on XRPL and another 15 million on Ethereum. The transactions put roughly $39.4 million of mint-and-burn activity through the treasury in a few days, while the stablecoin’s total market capitalization sits near $2.4 billion.
The mint was flagged by the Ripple Stablecoin Tracker, which follows treasury activity across both chains where RLUSD circulates. A treasury mint alone is not proof of new end-user demand. Minting and burning reflect issuance, redemptions and liquidity management, and Ripple does not publicly identify the customer or purpose behind each transaction. But the chain where the mint landed is the interesting part.
The chain split
Ethereum recently held roughly $1.38 billion of RLUSD supply, against about $1.03 billion on the XRP Ledger. That leaves a gap of about $350 million in Ethereum’s favor, a lead that grew as RLUSD issuance shifted toward Ethereum through the summer. Institutions building tokenized products have tended to mint on Ethereum first, where the DeFi rails and custody integrations are deepest and where most of the tokenized asset infrastructure already lives.
The new XRPL mint does not erase that lead. What it shows is that XRPL remains an active issuance venue rather than a legacy one, even while Ethereum carries the larger share. Ripple has an obvious structural interest in keeping its home chain busy with its own stablecoin, since RLUSD volume on XRPL supports the ledger’s broader payment narrative and gives the network a dollar-pegged settlement asset for its corridors.
Growth against the field
RLUSD has added about $1.07 billion to its market cap in 2026, which makes it the third-fastest-growing stablecoin of the year according to RWA.xyz data. Only Tether’s USDT, up roughly $6.7 billion, and Anchorage’s USDGO, an enterprise token up $1.4 billion, grew faster. RLUSD’s total supply stood near $2.40 billion on September 11, up from about $2.26 billion at the start of the month, with daily trading volume around $114 million.
For a stablecoin launched in late 2024, the trajectory is real but the scale is modest next to the incumbents. USDT circulates at more than $180 billion. RLUSD’s entire supply is about 1.3% of that. Circle’s USDC, the other regulated dollar token, sits in a similar league to Tether in aggregate terms. The growth ranking flatters a small base, which is why Ripple pairs the numbers with an institutional pitch rather than a market-share claim.
The institutional push
The treasury activity lands just after Ripple published a new institutional guide emphasizing RLUSD’s regulatory structure. The company says the token is backed 1:1 by cash and permitted cash equivalents held in segregated reserves, with redemption rights and regulatory oversight. Institutions can mint and redeem through Ripple Mint, the company’s issuance interface, which handles the KYC and settlement layer between traditional banking rails and the two chains.
That positioning is deliberate. Ripple is selling RLUSD to banks and payment firms that need a compliant dollar token, not to traders chasing yield. The stablecoin sits alongside Ripple’s payments business, custody offering and tokenization work, and the company has tied its XRP Ledger treasury management to those rails. The pitch is closer to a settlement utility than a trading instrument, and the mint-and-burn cadence this week is consistent with institutional plumbing rather than retail speculation.
What the burns mean
Burns are the mirror image of mints. When a holder redeems RLUSD for dollars, the tokens are destroyed rather than held in a treasury float. The 10 million burned on XRPL and 15 million on Ethereum in the same window as the 14.4 million mint suggests churn: some holders redeeming, others onboarding. Net of the three transactions, supply moved down slightly, which fits a stablecoin hovering near a steady market cap rather than one in a demand surge.
Anyone reading on-chain treasury flows should keep that in mind. A burst of mints gets reported as bullish; a burst of burns as bearish. In a $2.4 billion stablecoin, both are routine plumbing. The number that matters is the multi-week trend in circulating supply, which has crept up from $2.26 billion to $2.40 billion through September, a gain of about 6% in less than two weeks. That is the kind of steady accumulation that compounds into a real ranking over a year, and it is the trend that put RLUSD third on the 2026 growth table in the first place.
The watch item: XRPL’s share
The open question is whether XRPL’s share of that supply grows. Ripple has an incentive to route issuance home, and this week’s mint is a data point in that direction, but Ethereum’s $350 million lead reflects where institutional demand actually sits today. Watch the gap over the next quarter: if it narrows, Ripple is successfully pulling institutional flows onto its own ledger, and XRPL’s stablecoin depth becomes a selling point for its payment corridors. If it widens, XRPL risks becoming a secondary venue for Ripple’s own token, with the real liquidity living on a competitor’s chain.
There is also the regulatory calendar. US stablecoin legislation has been moving through Congress alongside the market structure bill, and a clearer federal framework for payment stablecoins would directly benefit a token whose main selling point is compliance. RLUSD’s growth has so far tracked institutional onboarding rather than retail demand, which means policy clarity matters more to its trajectory than any single treasury transaction.
This week’s mint is worth noting for what it says about Ripple’s chain strategy, not for what it says about demand. The $2.4 billion supply figure and the third-place growth ranking are the substantive numbers. The chain where the next mints land will tell you which way Ripple is pushing.