Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the company has received approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to launch the Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin.
Garlinhouse made the announcement in a social media post on December 11, adding that the token will be made public soon.
NYDFS initially approved the stablecoin on December 4, but its launch was delayed due to “unforeseen developments.” Ripple said it will continue to work toward launch. Stablecoins are supervised by regulators.
Specifically, New York State requires virtual currency companies serving state residents to obtain a BitLicense or Limited Purpose Trust Company license from the NYDFS.
fierce competition
The stablecoin market supply reached an all-time high of $193.6 billion on December 8th, and stands at $192.8 billion at the time of writing. The market is highly concentrated in Tether USD (USDT), valued at nearly $141 billion.
As a result, competition in this market becomes difficult. One recent example is PayPal's stablecoin PYUSD, whose market capitalization shrank by about 50% between late August and the time of publication.
Meanwhile, Ethena's stablecoin USDe has grown over the past few weeks, with its incentive program pushing its market cap to over $5.6 billion. Remarkably, this is larger than the combined market capitalization of Sky (formerly MakerDAO) stablecoins.
PYUSD had a market cap of over $1 billion when its incentive program was running on the Solana decentralized ecosystem, but has shrunk since it ended. USDe, on the other hand, currently offers an annualized yield of 27%.
As the market heats up and investors may get more valuable incentives, the RLUSD opportunity could revolve around offering attractive returns to users.
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gino matos
Gino Matos is a law school graduate and veteran journalist with six years of experience in the cryptocurrency industry. His expertise is primarily focused on the Brazilian blockchain ecosystem and decentralized finance (DeFi) development.
