Ripple's RLUSD Stablecoin Market Cap Could Grow to $160M, Impacting XRP Price

Citi Group's April 2025 report "Digital Dollars" highlighted the potential for the stablecoin market to grow substantially, reaching a staggering $1.6 trillion sector. In contrast, the current stablecoin market, largely dominated by Tether's (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), stands at approximately $244 billion.

If Ripple's RLUSD manages to capture even a 10% share of the $1.6 trillion stablecoin market, it could have a significant impact on the XRP price.

However, it's important to note that this scenario assumes a broad adoption of stablecoins for cross-border payments, which is an assumption made by Citi in its report.

Moreover, the bank's predictions are for 2030, allowing for ample time for the stablecoin market to expand to such proportions.

Despite Ripple's new entry into the stablecoin sector with RLUSD, the token has already hit $300 million in market capitalization since its launch in December 2024.

The integration of XRP as a bridge currency for transferring value from RLUSD to another currency, such as the US dollar, Yen, Euro, etc., is a key factor in this analysis.

Essentially, when a user wants to send RLUSD across borders, they will need to convert it to XRP and then XRP to the required currency.

To put this in perspective, if RLUSD manages to capture 10% of $1.6 trillion, which equals $160 billion, and its daily volume increases proportionally, it would have a positive impact on the XRP price.

Assuming a daily volume of $50 million for RLUSD at a price of $1, and a 53,000% increase in both market cap and volume, the daily volume would become approximately $26 billion.

Out of this volume, about $10 billion would be used for cross-border payments, which would generate network activity and fees for the XRP Ledger.

Considering a fee of 0.0015 XRP per transaction and an average of 10,000 transactions per hour on the XRP Ledger, the total fees would amount to 15 XRP per transaction x 10,000 transactions per hour x 24 hours = 360,000 XRP per day.

With an XRP price of $2, the daily fees would be around $720,000, and over a year, it would become approximately $2.6 billion.

If we take the annual volume of $9.5 trillion for cross-border payments at an average commission of 50 basis points, the total commission would be $47.5 billion.

From this commission, assuming a 50% revenue share for banks and payment providers and a 50% share for Ripple, the company would earn about $23.75 billion per year.

This income would be used to buy back XRP tokens, aiming to reduce the circulating supply and increase the price.

At an average price of $4 for XRP throughout the year, the company would be able to buy back around 5.94 billion XRP.

Finally, if we sum up the contributions from fees and buybacks, we can estimate the potential for XRP price increase.

In a pessimistic scenario, where XRP price remains at $2 despite the network activity and buybacks, the network fees would be around $2.6 billion per year, and with a total volume on the network of about $9.5 trillion at an average commission of 50 basis points, the banks'/payment providers'/economies' share would be $47.5 billion, which equals about $130 million per day.

However, if we take a more realistic scenario with an XRP price of $6, the network activity would generate network fees of about $7.2 billion per year.

In a highly bullish case, if the XRP price reaches $12 to $20, it would have a significant impact on the token price, potentially pushing it to rise to $12 to $20.

Overall, if Ripple's RLUSD manages to capture a 10% share of the $1.6 trillion stablecoin market, it could push the XRP price to reach $6 to $12. The token could reach the $12 to $20 range in a highly bullish case.

Such an increase would impact the Ripple price in various ways. First, it would help Ripple to achieve its goal of taking market share from the SWIFT network. Second, it would also boost the network activity and fees of the XRP Ledger network.

Further, the RLUSD growth would help to boost the XRP price and the burn rate, and boost its deflationary goals since part of the fees are incinerated.

The long-term XRP price