Ripple President on Stablecoins: Three Key Trends

Monica Long, Ripple’s president responsible for the company’s Business, Product and Engineering teams, shares her views on the stablecoin euphoria. The growing fragmentation of the stablecoin sphere, “branded” stablecoin products by TradFis, case-specific L1s are shaping the space right now.

Ripple’s Monica Long on stablecoins: “Reminds me of NFT fever of 2020-2021”

Stablecoin payments are now embraced by both TradFi and DeFi services as a “killer” use case for blockchain, Ripple’s president Monica Long admits in a thread. However, some major trends in the segment remain controversial.

First, the stablecoin space today can be compared to what the “NFT fever” looked like in 2020-2021. Many nascent stablecoins lack clear use cases. The segment doesn’t need 100 USD-pegged stablecoins, and new launches here might be FOMO-driven.

As covered by U.Today previously, analyst and investor Nic Carter also foresees that USDT/USDC duopoly will vanish soon.

You Might Also Like

Inter-bank payments and loyalty programs remain major business-driven use cases for stablecoins addressing the real “pains” of corporations. At the same time, for the majority of teams switching to stablecoins, this purpose is resource-ineffective.

Second, there’s a number of stablecoin-based protocols associated with big brands in fintech. These systems don’t guarantee seamless Web2/Web3 interconnectivity, so users should stay aware about on- and off-boarding roadblocks:

You still have the headaches of correspondent banking but hey! on a blockchain

In particular, this is painful for money businesses unlicensed in certain jurisdictions.

Stablecoin market cap routinely hits new ATH over $310 billion

Then, there’s a clear trend for stablecoins having their own L1 blockchains. Tempo, Plasma, Arc are only a few examples here. Such attempts are associated with huge demand for capital investing, while existing blockchains can address the same use cases.

Building a stablecoin-specific blockchain from scratch only makes sense if payments require certain features and functionality, Ripple’s president concludes.

Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD, issued on Ethereum (ETH) and XRP Ledger, saw its market cap increase by over 11% in just one month.

RLUSD’s circulating supply is close to $790 million. Meanwhile, the aggregated capitalization of the stablecoin segment exceeds $310 billion, which is an all-time high.

So far, USDT and USDC, the two largest stablecoins, are responsible for over 80% of this whopping sum.