A bid for Ripple’s OCC National Trust Bank Charter places RLUSD within US bank boundaries and forces XRP questions.
According to an application issued by the Currency Secretary’s office, Ripple is proposing the Ripple National Trust Bank, a Novo National Trust Bank, which is entirely owned and headquartered in New York, to support digital asset activities, including the issuance of RLUSD and custody.
RLUSD is already live on XRPL and Ethereum and is now built into Ripple’s payment stack. RLUSD was launched in December 2024 and merged into Ripple payments in April, saying it had approached a market capitalization of $250 million at the time.
A fresh tracking shows that RLUSD’s outstanding supply in mid-September is located within the top tier of Dollatken by Float, with around $730 million.
The Federal Charter sits alongside new US laws that govern payment stability. The Genius Act, signed in July, defines who could issue a payment stability, or set up reserve and redemption requirements, allowing the issuer to pay the coin holders yield or interest.
The Act creates routes for “federally qualified” issuers, including uninsured national banks chartered by the OCC, and routes for nationally qualified issuers under the cap regime.
Whether a charter relocates XRP depends on:
If Ripple secures a master account for the Federal Reserve, the reserves of RLUSD will be held directly with the Reserve Bank and can be settled through the Fed Services.
The Federal Reserve Account Access Guidelines reveal that the Reserve Bank applies a tiered, risk-based review and maintains discretion over access. These precedents mean that even chartered agencies face another hurdle for master access access.
Short-term operation images are easy. RLUSD has already been cleared on public rails and is used within Ripple payments along with named customers.
If OCC charters arrive, the issuance of RLUSD could be migrated under the bank’s umbrella, aligning the product with the federal framework while keeping the tokens live with XRPL and Ethereum. It’s not just a theoretical change. OCC has previously chartered National Trust Bank, a crypto native, and public commenters have already focused on Ripple’s applications.
XRP questions are divided into mechanisms.
With XRPL, all transactions consume a small fee paid on the destroyed XRP, and all accounts must post a base reserve to XRP. Lowering balance sheet friction for new users and apps per XRPL, reduced to 1 XRP per account in late 2024 with 0.2 XRP incremental reserves per object.
According to the XRPL transaction costs documentation, the base transaction fee remains at 10 drops, or 0.00001 XRP. In the current size of RLUSD, Fee Burns is a weak driver for XRP Float, but charters that push RLUSD activities over XRPL will broaden the flow of market production and AMM interactions where XRP acts as a base inventory or routing asset.
Depending on the market structure, RLUSD decides whether to sideline or energy the XRP. If the enterprise payment flow settles down to RLUSD end-to-end, some amounts that previously relied on XRP as a bridge asset can instead track the dollar token, especially in corridors where liquidity in both the origin and destination is dollar.
Conversely, the deeper RLUSD pool on XRPL gives market makers a reason to retain and deploy XRP against RLUSD pairs, collect AMM fees, and support tokenized finance and pathfinding across Fiat Iou.
XRPL’s AMM signaled to mainnet enablement in March 2024 and is designed to route through native liquidity, and the growth of Stablecoin tends to amplify its routing, as it prepares XRPL’s AMM notes.
Non-US regulations add a second lens to charter values
The EU’s MICA administration has already restricted the compensation of Stablecoin holders and has placed additional obligations as a distribution scale that can support bank-style issuers.
The new licensing framework for stubcoin, referenced by Hong Kong’s FIAT, comes into effect on August 1, with HKMA saying it plans to grant its first license in early 2026.
The Bank of England has proposed a systematic holding limit for stablecoins in the UK. OCC charters make RLUSD easier to passport to these conversations with large banks and regulatory venues.
The overhang in the lawsuit remains material, but is more clear. In August, a federal judge handed down the final sentence in SEC cases. This includes a $125 million civil penalty for in-house sales violations, closing chapters that had complicated US bank involvement.
The OCC Application states that the Trust Bank is a wholly owned subsidiary with a dedicated governance layer. This is a structure that can play activities based on the Stablecoin Law publisher definition and promote compliance.
To frame the trade-offs, the following table outlines three outcome paths and practical effects on RLUSD and XRP, using current data points and the contours of the new law.
| result | Stablecoin Publisher Status | Operational Effect | RLUSD Scale Marker | XRP Impact Channel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OCC Charter Plus FED Master Account | Issuer of federal qualification under genius (uninsured national trust bank) | Storage with Fed Services, direct access to Fed payments eligible for Fed reviews | Fastest onboarding of banks and PSPs, increasing share of XRPL and Ethereum institutional flows | More RLUSD-XRP AMM depth, pass funding via XRP in XRPL, still minor per TX |
| OCC Charter, no Master Account | Federal qualification issuer with supervised bank reserves | Bank grade compliance uplift without Fed accounts, easier alignment with MICA and HK regimes | Growth track continues from a $730 million float with bank-grade consolidation | Liquidity pairs are extended with XRPL, and XRP is used when efficient for inventory and routing |
| There are no charters | I have obtained a national qualification through the NYDFS Trust, subject to Genius Transition Caps | The current situation with partner banks and custodians, more fragmented onboarding | Scale depends on the use of exchange compensation and payment | The role of XRP that does not change from current flow, the tailbone of the restricted structure |
Two numbers fix the front view
First, RLUSD floats moved to hundreds of millions of floats. Encryption Approximately $730 million of unpaid data.
Second, the XRPL rate design means that even 1000 million transactions burn around 1,000 XRP, burning small drains compared to supply, resulting in increased capture on a range of liquidity rather than power combustion.
The use of charter accelerator bodies means that their drivers tilt towards the XRPL. There, routing makes economic sense.
There are also corporate build-outs to look at. Ripple agrees to acquire major brokerages on railways and hidden roads to enhance trade funds and distribution over RLUSD and custody, combining that with OCC filing, referring to a bank-grade sales stack.
If the charter lands, the next inflection is not a change of label. RLUSD is whether it becomes a priority payment asset at a regulated venue.
The result is that the charter does not erase the role of XRP in XRPL. This would formalize the line between bank-issued dollar tokens used for settlements and native assets used in liquidity, route search, and network economics under the laws currently defining stubcoin issuance at the federal level.
