Moody’s Ratings has given RLUSD, the dollar stablecoin issued by Ripple’s New York trust company, an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term rating, both investment grade. Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president for stablecoins, announced the RLUSD Moody’s rating on X at 01:10 UTC on Wednesday 28 October, and The Block detailed Moody’s reasoning a few hours later. The token, with about $2.6 billion in circulation, is the first stablecoin to receive an investment-grade Moody’s rating, according to Ripple.
That last claim is Ripple’s, not Moody’s. The agency’s own announcement, on Moody’s ratings site, would not load for Coindaro, so Moody’s reasoning below comes from The Block’s account and the claims from Ripple. A credit rating on a stablecoin is new, and “investment grade” is easy to read as more than it means.
The RLUSD Moody’s rating: A2 for the long term, P-1 for the short term
According to The Block, Moody’s assigned the two ratings under its Stablecoin methodology, published in March 2026, and said the P-1 grade is in line with the long-term A2. The Block names the issuer as Standard Custody & Trust Company (SCTC), the limited-purpose trust company supervised by the New York Department of Financial Services that issues RLUSD for Ripple.
McDonald’s post gave the headline figures and the claim Ripple is now repeating. “RLUSD is the first stablecoin to have ever received an investment-grade Moody’s rating,” he wrote, calling the grade “a massive validation” of the token. He also described P-1 as the highest short-term rating available under Moody’s new stablecoin framework. Ripple’s main account reposted the message six minutes later.
Moody’s itself, as quoted by The Block, did not use the word “first”. Coindaro found no earlier Moody’s rating of a stablecoin, but without the agency’s text the claim stays with Ripple. In May 2026, CoinDesk reported, Moody’s gave its top Aaa-mf assessment to tokenized money market funds from Fidelity International and BlackRock (BUIDL). Those are fund assessments, a different product.
What A2 and P-1 mean on Moody’s scale
Moody’s long-term scale runs from Aaa down to C. A2 is the sixth step from the top, after Aaa, Aa1, Aa2, Aa3 and A1, and Moody’s describes the A band as upper-medium grade with low credit risk. Investment grade ends four notches lower, at Baa3. The short-term scale is simpler: P-1 (Prime-1) is the best of its tiers, and A2 issuers commonly sit there.
A “deposit rating” is the term Moody’s uses for bank deposits, and here it is applied to the claim an RLUSD holder has on the issuer. It is an opinion on the risk of not getting a dollar back for each token. It says nothing about the price of XRP, and nothing about whether RLUSD trades at exactly $1 on an exchange at a given minute.
What backs RLUSD: BNY, Treasury bills and a 103% target
The Block lists the factors Moody’s weighed: the credit quality and market value of the reserve assets, how far reserves cover tokens in circulation, liquidity and redemption arrangements, segregation of the reserve, third-party custody, and operational, legal and regulatory risks.
Moody’s said the reserve is mostly held in short-dated, highly liquid US government assets and cash, according to The Block. In practice that means US Treasury bills, other short-term government paper and cash, kept at Bank of New York Mellon, which Moody’s rates Aa1. SCTC aims to hold reserves worth 103% of the RLUSD in circulation, and Moody’s said that target is above the minimum coverage the rating needs.
The agency also named what would push the grade down: weaker credit quality or a lower market value of the reserve assets, lower coverage, or weaker liquidity or capacity to meet redemptions. The Block’s report does not mention an outlook (positive, stable or negative), and Coindaro did not see one.
Why A2 and not Aaa
The ratings report itself, which would show how each asset type was scored, was not available to us. What the methodology says in general helps. When Moody’s proposed it on 12 December 2025, The Block reported that the agency would score each reserve asset by its credit quality and by how much its market value could fall, then adjust for operational, liquidity and technology risks. Only stablecoins whose reserves are segregated and can be used solely to repay holders, including if the issuer fails, would be rated. Two tokens that both promise one dollar could therefore end up with different grades.
The custodian, BNY, sits at Aa1, four notches above RLUSD. The Block’s account does not say which factor held the token at A2: the advance rates on its assets, the issuer, the legal ring-fence or the time needed to turn reserves into cash.
A rating issued in Ripple’s busiest week
The grade lands during Ripple’s Swell conference in New York, where US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the audience that dollar stablecoins will help fund the Treasury. On Monday 26 October, Ripple announced the final OCC approval for its national trust bank, which is meant to hold RLUSD reserves but takes no deposits and makes no loans.
The two events are easy to merge, but they are separate. The rated entity, per The Block, is SCTC, the existing New York issuer. Nothing Coindaro has seen says the rating depends on Ripple National Trust Bank or will change when reserves move under it.
US law is moving too. Moody’s said the GENIUS Act, the US stablecoin law that takes effect in January 2027, will strengthen reserve and holder protections, including keeping required reserves out of an issuer’s bankruptcy estate, according to The Block. Our page on the GENIUS Act start date sets out what changes on 18 January 2027. Bankruptcy remoteness is the condition Moody’s methodology checks before it rates a token at all.
RLUSD supply: $2.58 billion, mostly on Ethereum
RLUSD launched in December 2024. Ripple says it is used mainly inside its payments network and as collateral in Ripple Prime, its prime brokerage. The Block gives a market value of about $2.5 billion; DefiLlama’s stablecoin data, queried at 11:52 UTC on 28 October, showed slightly more.
| Measure (DefiLlama, 28 Oct 2026, 11:52 UTC) | Value |
|---|---|
| RLUSD in circulation | $2.58 billion |
| of which on Ethereum | $1.60 billion (62%) |
| of which on the XRP Ledger | $0.98 billion (38%) |
| Change over one day | +0.5% |
| Change over seven days | +7.3% |
| PayPal USD (PYUSD) for comparison | $2.99 billion |
| USDC | $71.3 billion |
| USDT | $181.2 billion |
RLUSD added about $175 million in a week, yet it remains smaller than PayPal’s token and a fraction of the two leaders, which our beginner’s guide to stablecoins explains. No market reaction to the rating could be pinned down. XRP traded near $1.33 at 11:45 UTC, up 1.93% over 24 hours, in line with bitcoin (+1.88%) and ether (+2.18%) over the same window, according to Coindaro’s market data.
How S&P and Bluechip already grade stablecoins
Moody’s is not the first outside firm to put a grade on a stablecoin, only the first to use a credit-rating scale. S&P Global Ratings launched Stablecoin Stability Assessments on 12 December 2023. They score a token from 1 (very strong) to 5 (weak) on its ability to hold its peg, and S&P says an assessment is not a rating action. At launch USDC received a 2 and USDT a 4. Coindaro found no S&P assessment of RLUSD.
Bluechip, a crypto-native rating site that is not a regulated agency, gave RLUSD an “A” on 18 July 2025 and ranked it first in its list at the time, ahead of USDC (B+) and USDT (D), according to Bitcoin.com News.
The three grades answer different questions. Moody’s A2 is about the chance of loss on the holder’s claim, S&P’s number is about the peg, and Bluechip’s letter mixes stability, management and governance scores. An “A” from Bluechip and an A2 from Moody’s are not the same thing, even if both look like top marks.
What the rating does not change for European holders
A Moody’s grade has no legal weight under MiCA, the EU’s crypto rules. Platforms licensed in the EU may only offer stablecoins from issuers authorised there, and ESMA has given them until January to drop non-MiCA stablecoins. Ripple itself is authorised in the EU: ESMA’s interim MiCA register lists Ripple Payments Europe S.A., licensed by Luxembourg’s CSSF on 29 June 2026, for exchange and transfer services, passported to 29 other European countries. RLUSD is a different matter. The register’s list of e-money token issuers, checked on 28 October, has no entry for RLUSD, SCTC or Ripple, while Circle’s USDC is there. Spanish outlet Merca2 reported in July that RLUSD was not yet offered in a regulated way in the EU and that Ripple gave no date. For a holder in euros, the token also carries the euro-dollar exchange risk, whatever its rating.
What is still unknown
- The date Moody’s signed the rating and whether it carries an outlook: neither appears in The Block’s report.
- How each reserve asset was scored, and which factor held the grade at A2.
- Whether Ripple paid for the rating. Issuers usually pay Moody’s for ratings, but neither side has said so here.
- Whether the rating will be reviewed when Ripple National Trust Bank takes over reserve duties, and whether other stablecoin issuers have asked Moody’s for a grade.
The next fixed date is the GENIUS Act’s start on 18 January 2027. Moody’s said a drop in reserve quality, coverage or redemption capacity could lower RLUSD’s grade, so the monthly reserve attestations Ripple publishes are the figures to watch until then.