Did Ripple Just Reload Market? $40,000,000 RLUSD Move Says Yes

Ripple’s stablecoin arm just put another $40,000,000 into the market in two back-to-back transactions, both initiated by the RLUSD Treasury. The money was sent straight to a Gemini-labeled address, a top U.S. crypto exchange led by the Winklevoss brothers.

Now this wallet is sitting on over 98.3 million RLUSD. Of course, this has everybody in the XRP community talking about what companies might be doing with it.

The mint was split into two equal parts, each 20 million RLUSD. There was no public announcement for the event, and there has not been any movement to exchanges or retail wallets so far. The stablecoin’s market cap is still at $1.33 billion, with a 24-hour volume of $110.7 million and 1.33 billion RLUSD in total supply.

The timing of this is certainly interesting. Back in November, Ripple was confirmed to be working with Mastercard, Gemini and WebBank on a pilot for credit card settlement using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger. They were reportedly waiting for regulatory clearance to roll it out fully. 

Not test for Ripple and Gemini

There are not any official wallet tags or explorer labels that connect today’s recipient to that pilot, but the scale of issuance and the known connection to the top U.S. exchange have not gone unnoticed.

It is not clear if this is something that has been planned before the official launch of the Mastercard-Ripple-Gemini partnership or if it is a separate move to manage liquidity. But with almost $100 million in stablecoins just sitting around in one Gemini-linked wallet, it seems like the $40 million follow-up is more like predeployment positioning, not a test.