Chainlink and Ripple Team Up to Hasten the Uptake of RLUSD, the New Stablecoin of the Cross-border Payments Company

The blockchain oracle provided Chainlink and the US fintech company Ripple have teamed up to hasten the uptake of Ripple USD, the stablecoin of the cross-border payments company.

Blockchain oracle provider Chainlink and US fintech firm Ripple have joined forces to accelerate the adoption of Ripple USD, the stablecoin offered by the cross-border payments company.

“A enterprise-grade, USD-denominated stablecoin built with trust, utility, and compliance at its core,” is how Ripple describes its new stablecoin.

Another Stablecoin Enters Booming Market

Chainlink's price oracle feeds will provide real-time pricing data for RLUSD on Ethereum, enabling DeFi applications to integrate the stablecoin for lending, trading, and other use cases.

.@Ripple x @Chainlink: $RLUSD has adopted the Chainlink standard for verifiable data to fuel DeFi adoption with real-time, secure pricing data.

The future of stablecoins is here: https://t.co/mq3cThLGQJ pic.twitter.com/993Ac0o282

— Ripple (@Ripple) January 7, 2025

The issuance of RLUSD on the Ethereum and XRP Ledger blockchains makes it inherently compatible with DeFi and smart contract applications.

Joining a crowded stablecoin market, Tether dominates the space with a 65% market share.

According to CoinGecko, which includes 232 variants of stablecoins or pegged tokens, the total stablecoin market cap stands at a record high of nearly $212 billion, which is roughly 6% of the entire crypto asset market.

XRP, LINK Tokens Slide

The announcement did not impact the respective tokens of the pair, both of which took a hit amid a broader market slide reported by Crypto Potato on Tuesday.

At press time, XRP is down 6.4% on the day, dropping from $2.45 to $2.28. Nonetheless, the cross-border token has surged 340% in the past three months and is still up 6.6% over the past week.

XRP is now trading about 34% below its peak price of $3.40, seven years ago this week.

Chainlink's LINK took a massive hit as the market correction battered altcoins, with the token down 11.7%, dropping from $23.50 to $20.5 at the time of writing. LINK hit three-year highs of $30 in mid-December, from which it has failed to recover and is still down 59% from its May all-time high of $52.70.

Crypto gambler raises the stakes

Starting in 2025, MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) embarked on what might be the most ambitious financial engineering scheme in the company’s history.

Michael Saylor and his associates announced plans to raise up to $2 billion through preferred stock offerings on January 3, pushing the limits of financial credulity. It's the latest step in what they boldly call their “21/21 Plan,” an almost unimaginable scheme to raise $42 billion over three years to buy (even more) Bitcoin.

The scale and the numbers are so vast that they almost defy comprehension.

The company now plans to raise more money than many Fortune 500 companies combined, despite the fact that its quarterly revenue was only $116.1 million, down 10.3% year-over-year.

MicroStrategy, on its own, is raising nearly 20 times its quarterly sales in fresh capital, and this is coming from a company that is burning through cash as its core software business flounders while it morphs into what is easily the most leveraged corporate Bitcoin bet in history.

As recently as November, MicroStrategy had deployed $2.03 billion to buy 27,200 Bitcoin at an average price of $74,463 per Bitcoin, while also completing a $3 billion issue of zero-coupon convertible notes due 2029 at a 55% conversion premium. Read about it in detail here.

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