One Coin up 86%, the Other Down 22%
$RLUSD started the year at $1.336 billion, crossing $2 billion in late August, a milestone Bitcoin.com News covered at the time. It set a $2.44 billion record on Sept. 14 and is now 86% above where it began 2026.
$PYUSD, however, seems to be headed in the opposite direction despite opening at $3.531 billion and peaking at $4.214 billion on March 5. Since then, it has lost about $1.5 billion, a 35% drop from the high.
Over the past week alone, Defillama shows $RLUSD up $112 million and $PYUSD down $61 million. Much of $PYUSD’s weekly drop came from Arbitrum, where its supply fell from $320 million to $229 million.
That said, $RLUSD is still small in a $306 billion stablecoin market dominated by tether and USDC $75.3 billion.
The Ledger Split Flipped This Week
Where the new supply lands has been part of the $RLUSD story all year. When Bitcoin.com News looked at the Sept. 14 record, Ethereum had captured most of the growth since July, and the $XRP Ledger’s share of supply had fallen from 58.9% to around 43%.
This week reversed that, at least for now. Between Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, $RLUSD on the $XRP Ledger grew from $1.036 billion to $1.099 billion, or $63 million. Ethereum’s balance rose from $1.343 billion to $1.392 billion, or $49 million. The $XRP Ledger now holds about 44% of $RLUSD’s supply and Ethereum about 56%.
Ripple has been building uses for that $XRP Ledger balance. In August, Bitcoin.com News reported that Ripple, Clearpool and Cicada Partners were building an institutional lending market on the network with $RLUSD as the credit asset. Earlier this month, Ripple outlined $RLUSD’s regulatory structure as institutions weighed it.
What the Prices Aren’t Showing
As of today, $XRP is trading near $1.49, down about 19% since Jan. 1. In fact, this very gap between price and network use has been building for a while, something Bitcoin.com News noted in early September ($XRP slid even as XRPL stablecoins and tokenization grew).
Bitcoin’s price action has relayed a similar story, with BTC sitting near $83,000 today, about 5% below its Jan. 1 open, even after a 44% third-quarter rally. Across the whole market, dollar tokens have kept growing faster than the coins they are used to trade.