RLUSD Scores an A2 and Lands on Coinbase, Giving Ripple’s Dollar Play Extra Shine

Moody’s Ratings assigned Ripple USD (RLUSD) an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term deposit rating on October 28, 2026, making the dollar-backed stablecoin the first to receive a Moody’s investment-grade rating. A2 is Moody’s sixth-highest long-term grade, while P-1 is its highest short-term rating. RLUSD, issued by Ripple subsidiary Standard Custody & Trust Company, had a market capitalization of about $2.6 billion following its December 2024 launch on Ethereum and the XRP Ledger.

Moody’s said the ratings reflect RLUSD’s reserve quality, liquidity and redemption arrangements. Reserves are held mainly in Treasury bills, other short-term U.S. government assets and cash, mostly with custodian BNY, and Standard Custody & Trust Company maintains a 103% reserve coverage target. Eligible institutional holders can redeem RLUSD at par within two business days. The ratings were requested by the issuer.

The agency also identified structural risks, noting that Standard Custody is not bankruptcy-remote and that RLUSD holders do not currently have a direct ownership interest in the reserves. Moody’s said the GENIUS Act, which is due to take effect in January 2027, will exclude required reserves from an issuer’s bankruptcy estate.

Ripple won final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for Ripple National Trust Bank on October 26. The federally supervised national trust bank will manage RLUSD’s segregated reserves and act as collateral trustee once open, while Standard Custody will continue issuing the stablecoin under New York Department of Financial Services oversight, placing RLUSD under both state and federal supervision. The OCC process began with conditional approvals in December 2025 for Ripple, Circle, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets and BitGo.

Ripple also announced that Coinbase will support RLUSD on Ethereum, XRP Ledger (XRPL) and Base for retail and institutional users through Coinbase Prime, Coinbase Exchange and the Coinbase Retail app. Coinbase Global Exchange customers will be able to use RLUSD as collateral, and Ripple will provide liquidity on Base. The company said the listing would “significantly” expand RLUSD’s market access and utility in the U.S. Ripple separately announced a partnership with Robinhood’s platform, which has 28.6 million funded customers.

Institutional adoption is expanding alongside the Coinbase rollout. Earlier this month, Standard Chartered began offering institutional RLUSD custody through its Dubai branch and said it was working with Ripple and LMAX Group on a “collateral mirroring” setup allowing clients to use RLUSD as trading collateral without moving it off the bank’s books. In November 2025, Ripple teamed up with Mastercard, WebBank and Gemini to explore using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger to settle fiat transactions on the Gemini Credit Card, pending regulatory approvals. RLUSD had just passed a $1 billion market capitalization at that time, making it the 11th-largest stablecoin according to DefiLlama.