Is RLUSD Replacing XRP? What Ripple Stopped Telling Holders

I don't feel the need to constantly update the whole world about our strategy. That was Ripple's CEO, Brad Garlinghouse. And if you hold XRP, that's not what you want to hear because Ripple holds more XRP than anyone [music] on the planet. And it's no wonder why so many holders are asking if RLUSD is replacing XRP. And right now, XRP is down more than 40% from last November.

But Ripple itself went the other way. Back then, big Wall Street firms bought in [music] when the whole company was valued at $40 billion. Just 4 months later, it was valued at $50 billion. So, Ripple got richer [music] and XRP holders got poorer. And you can't even find out how much XRP Ripple is selling.

They used to tell you every 3 months and now they stopped. But why did they? Well, we took Ripple's own numbers and worked out what they stopped telling you. and we went through what their CEO said in front of a room full of XRP holders when he was asked if they should share in Ripple's success. So, if a big part of your money is riding on XRP, you want to hear his answer because a lot of people in the XRP community have been wondering, is Ripple really working for the XRP holders or are they using XRP to fund their business to get richer? Well, to find out, we have to start with a number that [music] Ripple won't give you anymore.

Let's run it. All right, bull [snorts] runners. Welcome back to the channel. Now, Ripple used to tell you exactly how much XRP they were selling. Starting in 2017, it put out something called the XRP markets report every single 3 months.

That's the biggest XRP holder in the world, showing you its own sales, so it was transparent. Everyone loved it. And the selling was right there for anyone to see. Ripple sold XRP to payment firms that used it to send money abroad, and it bought a lot of it back on the open market. So, in the first 3 months of 2023, you could see that Ripple sold about $360 million more XRP than it bought back.

Although that wasn't the best thing to see, it was transparent. That's less than half of 1% of all the XRP that traded. So, if you wondered whether Ripple was dumping on you, you just didn't have to guess anymore. You could just open the report. You can see it for yourself.

And Ripple even told you why it was doing this. Proactive communication and transparency are part of being a responsible stakeholder. a responsible stakeholder. So why can't you check that today? Well, Ripple pulled those numbers in the summer of 2023 and its CEO blamed a lawsuit. Back in December of 2020, the SEC, America's markets regulator, sued Ripple over how it sold XRP.

That lawsuit hung over XRP for years. In July of 2023, a judge finally ruled that when Ripple sold XRP on exchanges to people like you, it wasn't selling a security. For XRP holders, that was the news they've been waiting for. And in the very next report, the sales numbers were gone. Ripple said it was re-evaluating the role and contents of this report going forward.

Garlinghouse put it this way. We began these reports to voluntarily provide updates given our XRP holdings. Sadly, they were used against us in the SEC lawsuit. For almost two more years, the report kept going with no sales in it. Then, in May of 2025, Ripple ended it.

Ripple said it would sunset the report in its current form because it has not had the intended effect, and it said its transparency had been used against the company, most notably by the former SEC leadership. But in the very same report, Ripple ran a heading that says SEC case closed. So, the reason for going quiet was the lawsuit, and the lawsuit was over. And honestly, that's the part that bugs me. The SEC got the blame, and you're the one who can't see the numbers anymore.

When Ripple ended the report, Garlinghouse posted, "Our commitment to transparency doesn't change with this evolution." And Ripple kept one page about its holdings. So, we'll come back to that page in a bit because the number on it matters. But first, there's something else Ripple was building the whole entire time, and it's been doing a lot better than XRP. It's called RLUSD, Ripple's own stable coin. So, think of it as a digital dollar that Ripple issues itself. in all RLUSD out there adds up to about $1.3 billion at the start of 2026.

By late September, it was nearly $2.5 billion. That's up 86% in 2026, while XRP has fallen by about a third. And it's easy to see why a business moving money would like it. A coin that's always worth a dollar is an easy yes. A coin that can lose a third of its value in a year is a much harder sell.

And here's the crazy part. More than half of all RLUSD doesn't even live on the XRP ledger. About 56% of it is on Ethereum right now. And obviously that number will change by the time you're watching this video. But when Ripple stable coin grows, it doesn't need XRP to do it.

A firm moving RLUSD around on Ethereum never touches XRP at all. So it's no wonder why so many holders are asking if RLUSD is replacing XRP. And Garling House got asked exactly that back in April on stage at XRP Las Vegas in front of a room full of holders. So remember the clip I opened this video with. That was part of his answer.

And here's more of what he said.

And look, I I get it that I I also and you know, maybe this is somewhat frustrating to the XRP community sometimes, but I don't feel the need to constantly update the whole world about our strategy because to some degree that just informs people who want to compete against us. And so, you know, look, we're going to do things that may not at first blush make crystal clear sense that, but I I swear to you, even if it doesn't have a direct line from point A to point B, point B being good for XRP, it may be point A to point B to point B to point C, it's all in service of how do we do things that expand, grow in driving liquidity, utility, and trust in XRP.

So, his answer is that it's all for XRP. He just won't share more because his competitors would see it, too. and he's probably on an NDA as well. So that leaves you just trusting the plan you're not allowed to see. And that gets a lot harder to accept once you do the math on Ripple's own XRP. So here's the page that I told you about.

It says Ripple holds about 37.7 billion XRP and 32.6 billion of that is locked in escrow. So about 5 billion sits in Ripple's own wallets and that's the part it can use at any time and that's all the page shows. No sales, no buybacks, no history. and the newest numbers on it are from the end of June. Now, that 32.6 billion in escrow works like a row of time locked boxes on the XRP ledger itself. Ripple locked most of its XRP away years ago on the first of every month.

Some of those boxes open and up to 1 billion XRP comes out. Ripple decides how much goes back in. Anyone can watch that happen on the ledger. What nobody can see is what Ripple does with the part that it keeps. Over the past year, 12 billion XRP got unlocked and Ripple locked 8.4 billion of it back up.

So, it kept about 3.6 billion. Now, unlocked doesn't mean sold. Some of it can sit in Ripple's wallet for months. So, if you hold XRP, here's what you really want to know. How much of Ripple's XRP is actually gone?

Well, the page won't tell you that. So, we worked it out ourselves. The last time Ripple showed you a sales number was the end of March of 2023. Back then, it held about 48.3 billion XRP counting their escrow. By the end of June this year, it was down to about 3.7 billion.

So, in a little over 3 years, Ripple's pile is down by about 10.6 billion XRP. And at the time I'm recording this video, that's about 13 billion. So, that's about a quarter of what the whole company was last valued at. And it's been going out at about the same speed the whole time, around 270 million XRP a month. If Ripple were still showing its sales, you could see how much of that was sold and how much was bought back.

Now, there's nothing to see unless you go digging through the files yourself. So, we did that digging and we found Ripple put about 127 million XRP into a company called Evernorth, which was set up to hold XRP, but that's a tiny slice of 10.6 billion. The rest could have been sold, handed to partners, or used in deals. We don't know that. And that's the problem.

If a big part of it was sold, you were buying and selling your XRP in that same market and you never knew it was happening. Ripple used to call sharing those numbers being a responsible stakeholder. Back then, that meant a sales number every 3 months. And today, you get one number on a page months later with no word on where the coins went. And yet, when it comes to its own shares, Ripple has no trouble putting out a number.

It set aside up to $750 million to buy back its own shares. And that buyback valued the whole company at $50 billion. And it says it put about $4 billion into investments in buying other companies. So Ripple's happy to show you what it's doing with its money. It just won't show you what happened to 10.6 billion of its XRP.

So the real question is, has Ripple turned its back on XRP holders? Well, it can't just walk away. And the reason is sitting right there on its own page. At about $1.25 in XRP, Ripple's pile is worth about $47 billion. The whole company was last valued at 50 billion.

So XRP is still the biggest thing that Ripple owns. And every time XRP falls, Ripple's pile and their valuation drops with it. If the price gets cut in half, so does the pile. So Ripple can't stop caring about XRP's price, even if they wanted to. And Garling House knows it.

On that stage in Las Vegas, he got asked about his role in the XRP community, and he had an answer for anyone who doubts Ripple's commitment. Look, I I I always thought it was kind of funny and strange that people questioned Ripple's commitment to XRP. Uh today, you know, Ripple is still the largest holder of XRP on the planet. We are the most interested party in seeing XRP be successful. We will continue to be the most interested party in seeing XRP be successful.

So, Ripple needs XRP to do well. But when Ripple does well, do XRP holders see any of it? Well, he got asked that exact question. The interviewer brought up how much money Ripple has now and asked him what a lot of holders want to know. Would Ripple ever use that money to buy back XRP so holders could get a piece of it.

He didn't go there. He started talking about Ripple's own shares instead. A lot of people had bought into Ripple through a platform called Link 2. Together, that was about 3% of the company and then link to went bankrupt. So, some people wanted Ripple to step in and buy those shares.

And the way he answered that tells you a lot about who Ripple is really working for.

I think some people would like to see us buy that 3%, but then we're in some ways at odds with the community that owns it because we want to buy it back at the cheapest possible price. That's our fiduciary obligation, but they want to get the maximum price.

So the people who bought in through LinkedIn want the most they can get. And Ripple wants to pay as little as it can. He called that a fiduciary obligation. That's just a legal duty to Ripple shareholders, the people who own a piece of the company. and holding XRP doesn't give you a piece of Ripple. So, that duty doesn't cover you.

Just think about how this past year has gone. If you put $1,000 into XRP last November, when those Wall Street firms bought into Ripple at $40 billion, you'd be down about $430 right now. Now, multiply that by 10. Multiply that by 100. If you put $100,000 into XRP last November, you'd be down $43,000 right now.

If you held Ripple shares, you got offered a buyback at $50 billion. 4 months later, that's 25% above what those firms paid. And the XRP buyback, he talked for about 2 minutes and it never came up. So the interviewer asked again straight out and this is what he said. But [laughter]

I guess the question is, should XRP holders be able to benefit directly from Ripple's, you know,

well, I hope XRP holders feel like they are benefiting from Ripple's existence by virtue of what we're doing to try to catalyze things within the XRP community, right? uh you know is there a scenario if and when Ripple goes public would we do something special for people who hold XRP or something maybe but I I I mean that's not in the immediate term

shareholders got their buyback in March with a dollar amount and a price XRP holders got a maybe with no date on it and that maybe only comes if Ripple goes public less than a minute earlier he said this about going public we're just not in a big hurry to go down that path so the one maybe you got depends on something Ripple is in no hurry to do. So, is Ripple really working for XRP holders? From everything we found, it's working for its shareholders first, and Ripple CEO told you that himself. Ripple needs XRP to do well. But it stopped showing you what they sell.

They won't share their plan. And when asked what holders get, the answer was maybe. So, if you've held XRP through all of this, that's hard to hear. I know it's frustrating. You sat through the lawsuit, you sat through the drops, you stuck with this coin, you believe in it, and Ripple still won't tell you what it's doing with its XRP.

You can't make Ripple bring that report back, and nobody can make it share its money with you. So, if you're waiting for Ripple to do something for your XRP, that could be a long wait. Ripple found a use for its own XRP. You saw 127 million of it go into one company. Yours is just sitting in a wallet or an exchange waiting on a maybe and waiting on the bull market to come back.

And when you believe in this coin for years, it's easy to keep telling yourself Ripple has a plan in secret for them to flip the switch. But Ripple already told you who it answers to first. So, what happens if that maybe never comes? Or what happens if it takes another 5 to 10 years? How much of everything you own is writing on a company that keeps you in the dark?

And what's your XRP actually doing for you while you wait? Well, those are hard questions to answer about your own money, especially when you've held for this long and you're emotionally attached and you're close to the coin and you can't see what someone looking at your numbers for the first time can see. And nobody at Ripple is going to do that for you. So, stop waiting on Ripple. The best thing you can possibly do is schedule a call with an expert on my team.

They'll go through your XRP holding strategy with you. They'll show you how much of what you own is really writing on Ripple, the company. Then they'll walk you through what smart investors are doing with their XRP while they wait. So that way it's not just sitting there. So that way they can earn yield on their idol crypto because you've given Ripple years.

Now give yourself one call to book it. The first link is in the description below. It says put your XRP to work. If you're on mobile, tap the button that says more. It's the first link at the top.

There's a short video there. It explains exactly how this works. We don't ask you for your private keys. We don't ask you for your seed phrases. We don't manage your money.

This is a free strategy call. It's not a sales call. You simply fill out a form that takes less than a minute. It gives us clarity on how we can help you. Then you simply pick a time to speak with an expert on my team that's been in the industry for the past decade.

So, click that link below. I'll see you on the next video. I'll see you at the top. As always, you know what to do. Stay bullish.

Hey, hey, hey. [music]