RLUSD is now on Coinbase. Ripple said on Wednesday 28 October that its dollar stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), can be traded and managed from that day on Coinbase Prime, Coinbase Exchange and the Coinbase retail app, with deposits and withdrawals on the XRP Ledger, Ethereum and Base. The Ripple press release, dated New York and sent at 8:00 AM EDT (12:00 UTC), presents the deal as wider access “in the U.S.” and names no other country.
Clients can convert US dollars and other supported dollar stablecoins into RLUSD at 1:1. Customers of Coinbase’s Global Exchange, the venue it runs outside the US, will get RLUSD later, with the option to post it as collateral. Ripple gave no date.
The token is small next to the two leaders. DefiLlama counted $2.567 billion of RLUSD in circulation at 17:46 UTC on 28 October, against $71.2 billion of USDC and $181.2 billion of USDT, according to its stablecoins data. Ripple’s own figure is not consistent: the release on its website says RLUSD has passed $2.4 billion in market capitalization, while The Block, citing Ripple, wrote $2.6 billion. We use the DefiLlama count.
It is the third RLUSD headline in two days. Moody’s rated the token on the same Wednesday (our piece on Moody’s A2 and P-1 ratings for RLUSD), and on 27 October the OCC gave its final approval to Ripple’s national trust bank, which will hold RLUSD reserves.
What is live on Coinbase today: three products, three networks
Four points in the release are concrete, and a US user can check each of them in the app.
- Retail and institutional clients can trade and manage RLUSD on Coinbase Prime (the institutional platform), Coinbase Exchange and the Coinbase retail app, starting 28 October.
- US dollars and other supported USD-denominated stablecoins convert into RLUSD at 1:1.
- Deposits and withdrawals work on the XRP Ledger, Ethereum and Base, the network Coinbase built.
- On Base, Ripple says it “will provide liquidity to support the growth of RLUSD”.
For a US user, the change is the on-ramp. Until now, buying RLUSD meant opening an account at one of the venues that listed it earlier. A Coinbase customer can now turn dollars or another dollar stablecoin into RLUSD inside the same account, then send it to a wallet on whichever of the three chains they use.
RLUSD exists as a native token on the XRP Ledger and as an ERC-20 on Ethereum. Base is the new one: DefiLlama’s chain breakdown for RLUSD lists only Ethereum and the XRP Ledger, so either the Base supply is still close to zero or it is not tracked yet.
Two executives are quoted in the release. “Our partnership with Coinbase meets that demand head on,” said Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins, after describing institutional appetite for compliant stablecoins. Brett Tejpaul, co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, said: “Adding RLUSD on Coinbase is another step toward the everything exchange.” The two were due on stage together at Ripple’s Swell conference in New York at 4:45 PM ET (20:45 UTC) on the same day.
What the release does not say about RLUSD on Coinbase
We read the release in full and found no listing notice from Coinbase itself; Coinbase’s blog could not be opened when this article was written. What follows are gaps in the text, not denials.
Trading pairs and fees
The release speaks of trading and of a 1:1 conversion, but it names no order book, such as RLUSD against USD or against USDC, and no fee. The two are not the same thing. A conversion at 1:1 is a fixed swap; a market pair has a spread that moves with supply and demand. Ripple adds that its integrations as a whole take RLUSD into “spot trading, institutional prime brokerage, derivatives and DeFi”, without saying which of those apply on Coinbase.
Is RLUSD available on Coinbase outside the US?
Not yet, on the release’s wording. Availability for Global Exchange customers “will follow”, with no country and no date. That step carries the most concrete promise in the text: RLUSD accepted as collateral, which would let traders hold it as margin instead of an idle cash balance. Which products would take it, at what haircut, is not stated.
The UK and the European Economic Area are not mentioned. Inside the EEA, MiCA rules decide which stablecoins an exchange may offer, and Coinbase has been applying them on its own timetable, as our report on USDC taking 56% of euro stablecoin trading and Coinbase converting EEA USDT explains. We found no source saying whether RLUSD will reach Coinbase users in France or Italy, and no statement on the listing from the AMF or Consob when this article was written.
How much liquidity Ripple puts on Base
No amount and no timetable. The Base plan predates this deal: in December 2025 Ripple began testing RLUSD on Base, Optimism, Ink and Unichain through Wormhole, with an official launch planned for 2026 “pending regulatory approval”, The Block reported. Coinbase deposits on Base turn that test into a route ordinary users can take. Whether the liquidity arrives will show up as a Base line in DefiLlama’s RLUSD breakdown, which had none at 17:46 UTC.
RLUSD supply: $2.57 billion, and a shift from the XRP Ledger to Ethereum
The DefiLlama figures, read at 17:46 UTC on 28 October, show a token that grew in the past week but stays small, with an uneven split between its two chains.
| Measure (DefiLlama) | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| RLUSD in circulation, 28 Oct | $2,567 million | All chains tracked |
| On Ethereum | $1,598 million | 62% of the total |
| On the XRP Ledger | $970 million | 38% of the total |
| One day earlier | $2,567 million | Total unchanged |
| One week earlier | $2,405 million | +6.8% in a week |
| One month earlier | $2,491 million | +3.0% in a month |
| USDC in circulation | $71,179 million | RLUSD is about 3.6% of it |
| USDT in circulation | $181,172 million | RLUSD is about 1.4% of it |
The chain split moved over the month. A month ago DefiLlama counted about $1.099 billion of RLUSD on the XRP Ledger and $1.392 billion on Ethereum; now it shows $970 million and $1.598 billion. Between 27 and 28 October, about $25 million left the XRP Ledger count and roughly the same amount appeared on Ethereum, with the total flat. That looks like a transfer between chains rather than new issuance. Neither DefiLlama nor Ripple gives a reason.
XRP, Ripple’s other asset, traded at about $1.31 at 17:32 UTC on 28 October, down 0.7% over 24 hours and 4.8% over seven days, according to our market snapshot. RLUSD itself is built to stay at $1, so the listing is not a price event for the token; the measure is supply and volume.
How RLUSD got here: from Bitso and Uphold in 2024 to Coinbase
Ripple launched RLUSD in December 2024. Its first venues were Bitso, Uphold, CoinMENA, MoonPay and Archax, Fortune reported on 17 December 2024. Coinbase was not among them.
Ripple wanted it. In January 2025 McDonald told The Block that getting an exchange to support a token was not “just a handshake” and gave no date for Coinbase, saying only that it could be open to slowly widening its stablecoin offer, as The Block reported. Twenty-one months later, McDonald’s line in the release says the deal brings RLUSD to “the largest institutional client base in the U.S. crypto market”.
Coinbase is not the only distribution deal of the week. The Block reported that Ripple has also widened its partnership with Robinhood to bring RLUSD to Robinhood’s retail and institutional businesses; we have not seen a primary announcement for that part. On the reserve side, the release lists US dollar deposits, short-term US Treasuries and other cash equivalents, and on 27 October Ripple said BNY holds XRP and RLUSD in custody, covered in our report on Ripple, BNY and tokenized trade finance.
Why a Coinbase listing matters for a $2.6 billion stablecoin
This section is our analysis. Dollar stablecoins compete on distribution more than on technology: a token is useful where people can get it, move it and post it as margin. Coinbase already offers USDC, the second-largest dollar stablecoin on DefiLlama’s count, so adding RLUSD does not change what its customers can do with dollars on day one.
For Ripple, the gain is reach. Within two days RLUSD has collected a Moody’s rating, a final OCC approval for the trust bank that will hold its reserves and a place in Coinbase’s retail app. None of that moves the supply by itself. At 1.4% of USDT, RLUSD needs order books with depth, a use as collateral and a reason for users to pick it over a token they already hold.
The analysis would be wrong if supply jumps without any of those: a sharp rise in DefiLlama’s count over the coming weeks, before pairs or collateral appear, would mean the app alone pulls in new holders. If supply stays near $2.6 billion and no Base line appears by year end, the listing will have been a convenience for US holders and little more.
RLUSD, USDC and USDT: how a dollar stablecoin works
A stablecoin is a token that aims to stay worth one unit of a currency, here one US dollar, because the issuer holds reserves and promises to redeem it. RLUSD, USDC and USDT work this way but differ in issuer, reserves, supervision and the chains they run on. Newcomers can start with our beginner’s guide to stablecoins.
What to watch next
Tonight at 20:45 UTC, McDonald and Tejpaul share the Swell stage in New York; anything they say beyond the release will be added here once it can be checked against a recording or transcript. Swell runs until 29 October. After that, the first document missing is Coinbase’s own listing notice with pairs and fees, then a date for Global Exchange customers.