XRP bull Jake Claver argues that Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin does not weaken the case for XRP, but may instead reinforce it by bringing more institution-friendly dollar liquidity onto the XRP Ledger. In a thread on X, Claver said the two assets are built for different roles: RLUSD as a compliant digital dollar, and XRP as the neutral bridge asset that allows value to move between otherwise fragmented markets.
The argument responds to a recurring question in the XRP community: if RLUSD can move money in seconds, why does XRP still need to exist? Claver said that framing misses the distinction between a settlement asset and a routing asset.
“RLUSD is not the finish line. It is the front door,” Claver wrote. “Institutions come for a compliant digital dollar. Once they are on the ledger they start asking bigger questions. Can we tokenize securities here? Settle trades instantly? Drop the 3 day wait.”
XRP As The Ledger’s “Money Changer”
To explain the point, Claver used the analogy of an old trading port where merchants arrive with silk, spices, wool, salt and gold, but rarely hold exactly what another trader wants. A silk trader looking for pepper may first need to trade into wool before finally reaching the spice seller. With only ten goods, he noted, that creates 45 possible trading pairs; with a hundred goods, the number rises to almost 5,000.
His conclusion is that markets need a neutral asset in the middle to reduce friction. On the XRP Ledger, Claver said, that role is played by XRP.
“On the surface that looks like one trade. Underneath it is two. He buys your silk and sells you silver, both at once. Remove that money changer and the whole port slows to a crawl. On the XRP Ledger, XRP plays that exact role,” he wrote.
Claver gave the example of someone swapping a tokenized Treasury bill for a euro stablecoin. In his framing, the user may only see one asset going in and another coming out, but the routing path can move through XRP in between. “The trader never sees the XRP step. Asset goes in, the one they want comes out. XRP sits quietly in the middle making it work,” he said.
Why RLUSD Does Not Replace XRP
Claver described RLUSD as a digital dollar designed to remain stable at one dollar and backed by real reserves in a bank. That makes it useful when both sides of a transaction want dollar exposure. But he argued that many future XRP Ledger use cases may not end in dollars at all, including tokenized Treasuries moving into euro funds, lending markets in non-dollar currencies, or other asset-to-asset transactions.
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“RLUSD is perfect anytime both sides of a trade want dollars at the end. Plenty of trades do,” Claver wrote. “But plenty do not. Tokenized Treasuries swapping into euro funds. Lending in other currencies. Any trade where neither side is USD. There, a dollar coin cannot sit in the middle.”
He then pointed to three limitations that, in his view, prevent RLUSD from becoming the ledger’s universal bridge asset. First, RLUSD has an issuer and therefore carries issuer-specific risk. If the company behind it faces legal, banking, or operational problems, the stablecoin could be affected. XRP, by contrast, is not minted by an issuer and cannot be switched off by a single company, he argued.
Second, Claver said a global routing asset needs to be neutral. Regulated stablecoins must comply with sanctions, blacklists and regional rules, and can freeze tokens or block certain users. That may be appropriate for a regulated dollar product, but Claver argued it is less suitable for a base-level bridge asset.
Third, liquidity pools need two different assets. RLUSD can sit in pools against euro stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries or other instruments, but it cannot be both sides of the market. Claver said the asset most likely to become the primary routing layer is one that is liquid, neutral, free of issuer risk and already proven over time. His answer was XRP.
At press time, XRP traded at $1.2628.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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