Robinhood taps Ripple’s $2.5 billion RLUSD stablecoin despite backing rival USDG
Robinhood helped launch a rival dollar-backed token, USDG, but will also offer Ripple's stablecoin to retail customers later this year.
Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin is set to reach Robinhood’s retail customers later this year, giving the dollar-backed token access to a brokerage platform with roughly 28.6 million funded accounts.
“From bringing RLUSD to retail and institutional markets to helping Robinhood manage its own treasury operations, this partnership reflects growing institutional demand for integrated solutions that support customer-facing offerings and core financial operations,” said Monica Long, president of Ripple.
The companies announced the partnership on Tuesday. RLUSD is already available on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp, the crypto exchange Robinhood acquired for $200 million in June. Now, RLUSD is also expected to become available through the Robinhood app before the end of 2026.
That decision puts Robinhood in an unusual position, as it helped establish the Global Dollar Network in 2024 to promote USDG, a competing stablecoin issued by Paxos. Now, Robinhood is announcing its plans to offer Ripple’s rival token to its customers.
The Global Dollar Network, founded in 2024, brings together companies that help distribute USDG and share in the revenue it generates. The arrangement gives members a financial incentive to promote USDG, but Robinhood’s partnership with Ripple shows that those incentives do not preclude members from offering competing stablecoins. Other founding members included Kraken, Galaxy Digital, Anchorage Digital and CoinDesk's parent company, Bullish. Arbitrum joined earlier this month.
Robinhood has already given USDG a role in its products. In July, the consortium announced that USDG would be the default lending asset for Robinhood Earn, its onchain lending product.
Robinhood did not announce any changes to its USDG agreement, and it remains unclear whether RLUSD will be offered alongside USDG in the same products. CoinDesk contacted Robinhood regarding this matter, but the fintech did not respond immediately.
Robinhood reported 28.6 million funded customers at the end of August. The companies have not said how many will be eligible to use RLUSD when it becomes available in the app.
The partnership also covers Robinhood’s institutional business. Bitstamp will use RLUSD on the XRP Ledger for settlement, while Robinhood plans to adopt Ripple’s treasury software for cash management, payments and forecasting.
Ripple Prime already provides Bitstamp with lending and margin financing across roughly 20 digital assets. The companies plan to add perpetual futures trading later this year.
RLUSD, launched in December 2024, has grown to a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion, according to the press release.
Robinhood has not said whether RLUSD will receive the same role as USDG in its lending products, or how the two stablecoins will be promoted to customers.
Also on Tuesday, Ripple, which got final Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) approval to go ahead with the Ripple National Trust Bank (RNTB) yesterday, announced the expansion of its partnership with BNY (BNY) to broaden institutional digital asset custody infrastructure and explore new institutional use cases for blockchain, including tokenized trade. Both firms first partnered in July 2025.
Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.
Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
Robinhood's dual stablecoin strategy—backing both USDG and integrating Ripple's RLUSD—signals institutional acceptance that the stablecoin market is fragmenting rather than consolidating around a single standard. This contradicts earlier assumptions that retail brokers would choose one rails provider. The move reflects pragmatism: USDG positions Robinhood as an issuer capturing seigniorage and network effects, while RLUSD integration ensures customers can access the largest non-USDC/USDT stablecoin ecosystem, currently valued at $2.5B.
The timing matters within crypto's regulatory maturity curve. By 2026, stablecoin reserves and redemption guarantees have become table-stakes compliance features, reducing differentiation risk between issuers. Robinhood offering both effectively hedges against regulatory or market dominance shifts. This pattern—multiple stablecoin support at retail venues—is becoming structural across platforms (see Coinbase, Kraken playbooks), suggesting the sector has moved past winner-take-all assumptions toward API-like interoperability expectations.
For Ripple, RLUSD inclusion at a major US retail broker validates the token's utility as actual payment infrastructure rather than speculation vehicle. It chips at USDC's institutional moat while remaining secondary to USDT volumetrically, but demonstrates stablecoin competition is now about infrastructure partnerships, not marketing.