Moody’s Grades Ripple’s RLUSD, Leaving XRP Holders to Gauge Gains

RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin, now carries Moody’s A2 long-term deposit rating as well as a top P-1 short-term rating, according to the agency. The investment-grade score covers the token on two blockchains.

For XRP holders, though, the milestone raises a larger question: where does the value actually end up?

What Moody’s New Rating Means for Ripple’s RLUSD

Moody’s delivered the rating on October 28, applying it to RLUSD on the XRP Ledger and on Ethereum.

Here are the main points:

• Moody’s gave RLUSD an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term rating, the highest possible for the short term.
• The reserve portfolio is concentrated in short-term U.S. government assets, with cash held at BNY.
• Standard Custody & Trust Company has set a 103% reserve coverage target.
• RLUSD launched in December 2024 and now holds a market value close to $2.5 billion.

Reserve quality, liquidity, redemption terms and segregated custody all fed into Moody’s assessment. Moody’s also flagged the GENIUS Act, which becomes effective in January 2027 and is set to insulate required reserves from an issuer’s bankruptcy.

Institutional risk teams now have a familiar benchmark for evaluating the stablecoin. Jack McDonald, Ripple’s SVP of stablecoins, described RLUSD as the first stablecoin to hold a Moody’s investment-grade rating.

More good news for $RLUSD this week – @moodysratings has assigned RLUSD an A2 long-term rating and P-1 short-term rating, the highest possible short-term rating under its new stablecoin framework.

TL;DR: RLUSD is the first stablecoin to have ever received an investment-grade…

— Jack McDonald (@_JackMcDonald_) October 28, 2026

Will XRP Holders See a Payoff as RLUSD Expands?

After Ripple secured final OCC approval for Ripple National Trust Bank on October 26, that question carried greater weight.

• The bank can now manage RLUSD reserves and offer fiduciary custody, but ordinary deposits and loans are off the table.
• Robinhood separately announced a partnership with Ripple to put RLUSD on its app, which counts 28.6 million funded customers.
• Coinbase has also added RLUSD support on XRP Ledger, Ethereum and Base.

Even so, that would not mean a tenfold jump in XRP’s price. The larger opportunity involves XRP serving as a bridge asset for cross-currency payments. So the bull scenario rests on deeper liquidity, more bridge transactions and institutional trading.

Put simply, Ripple could be putting together a sizable regulated dollar operation. Whether XRP captures meaningful value from it is still unresolved.