Here is how much Ripple USD (RLUSD) has been minted before today’s launch

Ripple, the US-based business firm behind the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, made headlines on December 16, announcing that its long-awaited stablecoin is finally ready to roll out, which will later today

There was a lot of speculation and fraud attempts before the official announcement, but CryptoQuant data shows that the actual number of new tokens minted has increased to almost $66 million.

Interestingly, the majority of RLUSD coins are on the Ethereum network: $52.9 million, while only $13.3 million have been minted by Ripple itself: XRPL.

RLUSD minted before release. Source: CryptoQuant

The numbers are quite impressive, considering that the stablecoin has yet to officially see the light of day. It is scheduled to take place later today, as reported yesterday.

After receiving the necessary green light from the NYDFS, the Ripple team announced on December 16 that RLUSD would go live the next day. Additionally, the stablecoin advisory board has seen a couple of new additions: Raghuram Rajan (former RBI governor) and Kenneth Montgomery (former first vice president and chief operating officer of the Boston Federal Reserve).

Ripple described RLUSD as the “future of finance”. It is a stablecoin fully backed by US dollar deposits, government bonds and “other cash equivalents with monthly third party audits”. It will receive multi-chain support, which is already evident from the minting process on Ethereum and XRPL, with other networks coming later.

RLUSD is built for “cross-border payments, DeFi integration and bridge between fiat and crypto”.

Ripple aims to enter a highly competitive and growing stablecoin market. The total value of all these tokens recently exceeded $200 billion and is mainly dominated by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.

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