The rise of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin has revived an old debate around XRP: if institutions can settle payments using a dollar-backed asset, do they still need XRP? Attorney and longtime XRP
The rise of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin has revived an old debate around XRP: if institutions can settle payments using a dollar-backed asset, do they still need XRP?
Attorney and longtime XRP commentator Bill Morgan thinks some of the criticism around that question is inconsistent.
Morgan responded to a post arguing that Ripple spent years promoting XRP as a bridge asset for cross-border payments, only for its newer corporate disclosures and products to place more emphasis on stablecoins such as RLUSD.
His counterargument focuses on how critics previously described XRP-based payments.
Under RippleNet’s older payment model, XRP could be purchased as a bridge asset, transferred and then sold into the destination currency within seconds.
Critics often argued that this structure had little lasting impact on XRP price because the purchase and sale happened almost immediately.
Morgan’s point is that many of those same critics now argue that greater use of RLUSD will reduce XRP demand because fewer payments may need XRP as the bridge asset.
That creates an obvious tension.
Interesting information. You could have pointed out and elaborated however on what you briefly mentioned that with ripplenet payments when XRP was used as a bridge there was a corresponding purchase and sale of XRP within a few seconds. Critics of XRP at that time could not argue that XRP had no utility so they instead argued that such transactions had no impact on price because the corresponding buy and sell of XRP did not increase demand and was price neutral. Many of those same critics now argue that the use of RLUSD will reduce demand by banks for XRP and lessen XRP’s utility. in other words, they cast shade on XRP on the assumption that XRP is being used less in transactions that they previously argued had a neutral effect on demand and price. Totally inconsistent FUD between a few years ago and now in terms of impact on price and demand.
— bill morgan (@Belisarius2020) November 1, 2026
If XRP bridge transactions were supposedly price-neutral before, then replacing some of those transactions with RLUSD should not suddenly become a powerful bearish factor for XRP.
Morgan called the two arguments inconsistent.
Read also: ChatGPT Predicts XRP and Bitcoin Prices in 2027 After the Binance Hack
There is no question that RLUSD now occupies a bigger role in Ripple’s payments strategy.
Ripple describes RLUSD as an enterprise-focused stablecoin designed for payments, remittances, treasury flows and settlement. It is already integrated into Ripple Payments in some markets.
Recent deals have expanded that role further.
Coinbase added RLUSD support across its institutional and retail platforms in late October, while Standard Chartered launched institutional custody for RLUSD on the XRP Ledger earlier in the month.
Ripple has also started using RLUSD for real-world settlement applications such as its work with C2FO.
The situation is more complicated than RLUSD simply replacing XRP.
Ripple itself continues to describe XRP as a bridge asset for cross-border liquidity, and BNY recently added support for both XRP and RLUSD to its digital asset custody platform.
The two assets also serve different purposes.
RLUSD is designed to maintain a stable $1 value. XRP is a floating-price asset that can bridge between currencies and other assets without requiring the sender and receiver to use the same stablecoin or fiat currency.
That means the key question is not whether RLUSD exists.
It is how much future payment and liquidity activity actually requires XRP.
Morgan’s criticism does not prove that growing RLUSD adoption will increase XRP demand. But it does expose a weakness in one common bearish argument.
If XRP’s old bridge transactions were truly irrelevant to demand and price, then fewer of those same transactions cannot logically be treated as a major reason XRP should lose value.
The more important debate is what new forms of XRP demand emerge as Ripple and the XRP Ledger move further into institutional finance.
For more crypto news and price predictions, click here.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for daily crypto updates, market insights, and expert analysis.
The post Does RLUSD Really Reduce XRP Utility? Pro-Ripple Lawyer Calls Out the Contradiction appeared first on CaptainAltcoin.
