Ripple’s RLUSD Is Just $248M Away From Overtaking Paypal’s Stablecoin

A Near-Tie at the Top of the Leaderboard

Token Terminal data ranked the day’s biggest stablecoin gainers, with Paypal’s PYUSD coming in first with $82.7 million of new supply (while RLUSD was just a hair behind at $82.1 million). Both beat tether (USDT) at $69.4 million, Sky’s USDS at $37.4 million and Ethena’s USDe at $35.9 million.

Defillama’s daily series linked that burst to Sept. 26, when RLUSD climbed from $2.409 billion to $2.491 billion, an all-time high it has held since (and is currently sitting at $2.491 billion). PYUSD rose from $2.697 billion to $2.779 billion over the same stretch.

However, as of today, PYUSD has given back $40 million and sits at $2.739 billion, while RLUSD hasn’t moved, resulting in the gap between the two dollar tokens shrinking to about $248 million.

One Coin up 86%, the Other Down 22%

RLUSD started the year at $1.336 billion, crossing $2 billion in late August, a milestone Bitcoin.com News covered at the time. It set a $2.44 billion record on Sept. 14 and is now 86% above where it began 2026.

PYUSD, however, seems to be headed in the opposite direction despite opening at $3.531 billion and peaking at $4.214 billion on March 5. Since then, it has lost about $1.5 billion, a 35% drop from the high.

Over the past week alone, Defillama shows RLUSD up $112 million and PYUSD down $61 million. Much of PYUSD’s weekly drop came from Arbitrum, where its supply fell from $320 million to $229 million.

That said, RLUSD is still small in a $306 billion stablecoin market dominated by tether and USDC $75.3 billion.

The Ledger Split Flipped This Week

Where the new supply lands has been part of the RLUSD story all year. When Bitcoin.com News looked at the Sept. 14 record, Ethereum had captured most of the growth since July, and the XRP Ledger’s share of supply had fallen from 58.9% to around 43%.

This week reversed that, at least for now. Between Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, RLUSD on the XRP Ledger grew from $1.036 billion to $1.099 billion, or $63 million. Ethereum’s balance rose from $1.343 billion to $1.392 billion, or $49 million. The XRP Ledger now holds about 44% of RLUSD’s supply and Ethereum about 56%.

Ripple has been building uses for that XRP Ledger balance. In August, Bitcoin.com News reported that Ripple, Clearpool and Cicada Partners were building an institutional lending market on the network with RLUSD as the credit asset. Earlier this month, Ripple outlined RLUSD’s regulatory structure as institutions weighed it.

What the Prices Aren’t Showing

As of today, XRP is trading near $1.49, down about 19% since Jan. 1. In fact, this very gap between price and network use has been building for a while, something Bitcoin.com News noted in early September (XRP slid even as XRPL stablecoins and tokenization grew).

Bitcoin’s price action has relayed a similar story, with BTC sitting near $83,000 today, about 5% below its Jan. 1 open, even after a 44% third-quarter rally. Across the whole market, dollar tokens have kept growing faster than the coins they are used to trade.