Ripple’s Big Moves in Early 2024: What Really Changed

In early 2024, Ripple rolled out new tools for big businesses. One was Ripple Treasury, a platform for companies to handle cash and digital money all in one place. Instead of waiting days for overseas payments, firms could now move funds in seconds using RLUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin. Companies could also park idle cash in special funds like BlackRock’s BUIDL, earning extra returns even while money sat unused. Banks and firms quickly jumped on board. Deutsche Bank started using Ripple’s system for international transfers. Aviva Investors teamed up to turn fund shares into tokens on Ripple’s XRP Ledger. Even Zand, a digital bank in the UAE, signed on to handle stablecoin payments. By March, RLUSD had ballooned to $1. 56 billion in value—up from just $132 million a year before. Big names like BNY Mellon kept its reserves, while BlackRock used it to trade shares in tokenized funds.Asia got in on the action too. Japan’s SBI Holdings launched RLUSD in the country. Singapore’s central bank tested it in a program looking at tokenized finance. Mastercard even started settling real credit card payments with RLUSD on Ripple’s network. Meanwhile, Ripple Prime opened up crypto futures trading, and Convera partnered to push cross-border payments further. But not everything was smooth. A new stablecoin called AUDD, backed by Australia’s government, hit the XRP Ledger—making it the first official stablecoin there. By late February, the ledger had over $2 billion in tokenized assets, up from under $1 billion at the start of the year. Yet despite all this progress, XRP’s price fell hard—dropping 40% from $2. 40 to $1. 35 in just three months. Here’s why: most of Ripple’s deals were about payments and settlements, not about buying or holding XRP. RLUSD did the heavy lifting instead, replacing the need for XRP in many cases. So while partnerships kept growing, the token’s value took a hit.