Ripple's RLUSD closes to within $248m of PayPal's PYUSD
RLUSD hit a record $2.49bn after adding $82.1m in a day, while PYUSD has shrunk 22% this year, narrowing the gap between the two stablecoins to about $248m.
Key points
- RLUSD reached a record $2.491bn on Sept. 26, up from $2.409bn the previous day, according to Defillama.
- PYUSD has fallen to $2.739bn, down 22% this year and 35% below its March 5 peak of $4.214bn.
- Token Terminal ranked PYUSD first among daily gainers with $82.7m of new supply, just ahead of RLUSD's $82.1m.
- The XRP Ledger added $63m of RLUSD in the week to Sept. 28, against $49m on Ethereum, lifting its share to 44%.
- RLUSD began 2026 at $1.336bn and is now about 86% higher, while XRP trades near $1.49, down 19% this year.
Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin has closed to within roughly $248 million of PayPal's PYUSD after setting a fresh supply record, Bitcoin.com News reports. RLUSD added $82.1 million in a single day to reach $2.491 billion on Sept. 26, an all-time high it has held since, according to Defillama data. PYUSD, meanwhile, has been shrinking this year and now sits at $2.739 billion.
The two tokens were almost level on the day's leaderboard. Token Terminal data ranked PYUSD first among stablecoin gainers with $82.7 million of new supply, with RLUSD just behind at $82.1 million. Both outpaced tether's USDT at $69.4 million, Sky's USDS at $37.4 million and Ethena's USDe at $35.9 million. Defillama linked RLUSD's jump to Sept. 26, when it climbed from $2.409 billion to $2.491 billion, while PYUSD rose from $2.697 billion to $2.779 billion over the same stretch.
Since then the pair have moved in opposite directions. PYUSD has given back about $40 million and sits at $2.739 billion, while RLUSD has held its level, cutting the gap between them to roughly $248 million. Over the past week, Defillama shows RLUSD up $112 million and PYUSD down $61 million. Much of PYUSD's weekly decline came from Arbitrum, where its supply fell from $320 million to $229 million.
A near-tie at the top
The longer trend is starker. RLUSD started the year at $1.336 billion, crossed $2 billion in late August and set a $2.44 billion record on Sept. 14, leaving it 86% above its 2026 opening level. PYUSD opened at $3.531 billion and peaked at $4.214 billion on March 5, but has since lost about $1.5 billion, a 35% drop from that high. Even so, RLUSD remains small in a $306 billion stablecoin market dominated by tether and USDC's $75.3 billion.
Where the new supply lands has been part of the RLUSD story all year. When Bitcoin.com News covered the Sept. 14 record, Ethereum had captured most of the growth since July and the XRP Ledger's share had fallen from 58.9% to around 43%. That reversed this week: between Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, RLUSD on the XRP Ledger grew by $63 million to $1.099 billion, while Ethereum's balance rose $49 million to $1.392 billion. The XRP Ledger now holds about 44% of 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 set out RLUSD's regulatory structure as institutions weighed it up.
One coin up, one down
The supply growth has not been matched by token prices. XRP trades near $1.49, down about 19% since Jan. 1, a gap between price and network use that Bitcoin.com News noted in early September. Bitcoin sits near $83,000, about 5% below its Jan. 1 open despite a 44% third-quarter rally. Across the market, dollar tokens have kept growing faster than the coins they are used to trade.