Ripple Ramps Up RLUSD Minting As Questions Mount

Ripple minted 10 million RLUSD tokens on the XRP Ledger on Aug. 17, raising the total circulating supply to approximately $1.71 billion, according to CoinGecko data. The transaction used two authorized signers and cost 0.000405 XRP, but Ripple did not name the receiving customer or disclose what the tokens would be used for.

RLUSD Supply Climbs Past $1.71 Billion

On-chain records from XRPScan showed that Ripple’s issuer account transferred the tokens to a designated RLUSD destination wallet. The maximum delivery amount recorded was 10 million RLUSD. A separate community account reported that 5 million RLUSD had been burned on Ethereum the same day, though no link between the two transactions has been confirmed. Ripple completed a separate 10 million token mint on Aug. 10, a period when supply still sat below earlier summer levels.Ripple’s own transparency page reported $1.5896 billion of circulating RLUSD and $1.7026 billion of reserve assets as of Aug. 6. The gap between that snapshot and the current $1.71 billion figure reflects blockchain activity recorded after the reporting cutoff. Standard Custody & Trust Company issues RLUSD under a limited-purpose trust charter from the New York State Department of Financial Services. Reserve assets include cash, cash equivalents, and short-term U.S. Treasury securities, with Deloitte conducting monthly attestations.

Minting Tokens is Not the Same as Selling Them

The BankXRP community account posted on X that 5 million RLUSD had been burned on Ethereum on the same date. “This is what real stablecoin backing looks like,” the account wrote, calling it evidence of a transparent mint-on-demand and burn-on-redemption cycle. Available records do not confirm whether the Ethereum burn and the XRPL mint were connected.That framing deserves scrutiny, and a stablecoin mint creates tokens on a blockchain. It does not prove that those tokens entered exchanges, payment channels, or institutional portfolios. Ripple Mint, the platform Ripple launched in July for approved institutions, allows customers to issue, redeem, and bridge RLUSD for settlement and treasury operations. Some issuance may therefore reflect inventory management rather than new investment inflows. Without knowing who requested the mint or where the tokens moved afterward, each issuance is a supply event rather than a demand signal.

Ripple Builds the Rails While Demand Stays Unproven

Ripple has steadily expanded its institutional distribution network in 2026. In June, Ripple and SBI opened RLUSD access to eligible customers in Japan through SBI VC Trade. Ripple also partnered with BiLira, Bitexen, and Bitlo to make RLUSD available to institutions in Türkiye. In August, Binance extended its RLUSD promotional campaign with a 1 million XRP reward pool running from Aug. 14 to Sept. 11. The infrastructure is real, and the question is whether supply growth reflects genuine institutional adoption or pre-positioned inventory.RLUSD’s $1.71 billion market capitalization remains a fraction of Tether’s roughly $183 billion and Circle’s roughly $72 billion. Ripple’s next monthly reserve attestation will offer the clearest comparison between outstanding tokens and backing assets since the Aug. 6 snapshot. Until that report arrives, the public ledger confirms the mint but not the motive behind it.