Ripple’s been hustling for over a decade, dreaming big about their XRP token becoming the universal bridge currency for cross-border payments.
You know, the slick middleman turning dollars into pesos with a quick hop. But guess what?
The big boss at BitGo, Mike Belshe, just dropped a truth bomb at the American Banker’s Digital Banking 2025 conference.
He says that dream? Dead on arrival. And the smoking gun? Ripple’s shiny new stablecoin, RLUSD.
CEO of @BitGo talks about @Ripple & XRP.
This is why #XRP needs:
1. SPOT ETFs
2. XRPFi
3. XRP Treasury Strategies
4. More Innovators & Builders
USD Stablecoins = LESS Conversations and therefore eating up the payments world.💯Btw, he spoke at the American Bankers.😅@AmerBanker pic.twitter.com/M9Q3d9TXlz— 🌸Crypto Eri ~ Carpe Diem (@sentosumosaba) June 22, 2025
RLUSD exist because there’s no demand for XRP?
Belshe laid it out plain and simple. Back in 2014, Ripple thought, hey, let’s make XRP the go-to bridge.
But that two-step dance, dollars to XRP, then XRP to pesos, turned out to be a clunky mess.
Two conversions? That’s like asking your office coffee machine to make espresso, then drip coffee, then espresso again.
Ain’t nobody got time for that! Instead, Belshe argues, dollar-backed stablecoins like RLUSD are the real MVPs now.
They’re simple, faster, cheaper, and just plain better for cross-border payments. And simplicity wins.
Teamwork, or competition between the tokens?
And RLUSD isn’t just a flash in the pan. Since its debut in December 2024, this stablecoin has quietly climbed the ranks, hitting a market cap north of $429 million by June 2025.
It’s backed 1:1 by cash and equivalents, issued on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, making it quite versatile and liquid enough to handle real-world transactions, from farmers’ market tap payments to monthly interest airdrops. Simple, effective, no fuss.
That’s the kind of thing that makes your average office worker nod in approval when the lunch line moves faster.
But Ripple’s CTO, David Schwartz, isn’t ready to throw in the towel on XRP just yet. He insists RLUSD isn’t here to replace XRP but to complement it.
Think of XRP as the seasoned pathfinder, guiding liquidity between non-dollar pairs, while RLUSD handles the heavy lifting of stable, dollar-based transactions.
It’s like having a veteran quarterback and a speedy wide receiver on the same team, different roles, same goal. But will it work? This is the big question.
Community reactions
The Ripple community? Oh, it’s a mixed bag. Some, like Crypto Eri, see Belshe’s critique as a call to action, more innovation, spot ETFs, treasury strategies, and builders needed to keep XRP relevant.
Others? They’re chuckling, calling it comedy gold, pointing out the obvious, stablecoins are eating the bridge currency lunch, and XRP’s role is shrinking fast.
Either way, Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin is quietly but surely rewriting the playbook on cross-border payments.
XRP’s grand bridge currency dream might be fading, but RLUSD is stepping into the spotlight, proving that sometimes, simpler is better.
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