Ripple’s highly-anticipated stablecoin RLUSD has seen a relatively muted launch, with trading volumes in the low millions and listings on a few exchanges outside of the top ones.
According to available data from CoinGecko, RLUSD’s 24-hour trading volume was of little over $3 million and the cryptourrency has only been listed on a handful of exchanges, with the lion’s share of its trading volume reportedly occurring on decentralized exchange Sologenic.
The stablecoin, whose approval by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) helped the price of XRP surge, was initially launched on Ethereum and on the XRP Ledger, and currently has a circulating supply of 53.1 million tokens.
While listings and trading volume are muted for the newly launched stablecoin, Ripple’s website suggests that the token will soon be listed on new exchanges, including industry heavyweights Bitstamp and Bullish. Top exchanges by trading volume, including Binance, Coinbase and OKX, are noticeably absent from the list.
Despite the slow launch, it’s likely RLUSD will grow to become a major stablecoin, given its regulatory approval and backing from a major fintech firm that’s also a major player in the ecosystem of the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, XRP.
RLUSD’s Launch Marked by Anticipation
The launch of RLUSD didn’t just help the price of XRP explode upwards, but it also saw the cryptocurrency’s open interest – which refers to the amount of outstanding futures and options contracts not yet settled – hit a new all-time high of $4 billion.
Its regulatory approval, coupled with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump winning the U.S. elections after campaigning on a pro-crypto stance, heightened excitement surrounding a potential spot XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) launch.
Several companies, including WisdomTree, 21Shares, Bitwise, and Canary Capital have already filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to list such a fund.
Before its launch, excitement behind the upcoming launch of RLUSD was so significant that on-chain data shows traders bid as much as 836 XRP, then worth over $2,000 as traders attempted to be the first to get their hands on the token.
