XRP Drops In Crypto Rankings Amidst RLUSD Delay

In a latest development, Ripple has postponed its RLUSD stablecoin launch as it awaits a final nod from the New York Department of Financial Services. In an official X post, it noted “Despite some speculation, $RLUSD isn’t launching today. We’re in lockstep with the NYDFS on final approval and will share updates as soon as possible.”

XRP Loses Its Position

XRP had recently been on a rally amidst a broader altcoin rally. However, this announcement took XRP’s price down to $2.31 within 24 hours. This also took away XRP’s position of the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, as Tether bounced back. 

XRP is currently trading at $2.39, down over 6% in the last 24 hours. Its market cap stands at $135 billion, down by over 7% in the past day. Nevertheless, XRP continues to stay ahead of Solana (SOL) and Binance token (BNB) even as the latter reached its all-time high on Dec. 4. 

Increased Selling Pressure

While the news of the postponement of RLUSD preceded the drop in price, speculations also suggest the panic selling. This is further highlighted in the increased selling pressure, where both price and trading volume has come down over $32 billion to $16 billion on Dec. 4, which suggests that the market is in a cooling-off period at the moment.

RLUSD, a 1:1 U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, will be fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. government Treasury securities and cash equivalents. Since early August, the RLUSD stablecoin has been in beta testing on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and the Ethereum mainnet. Ripple plans to gradually expand RLUSD to include new blockchains and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. The RLUSD stablecoin is expected to play a significant role in the Ripple ecosystem.