Ripple’s RLUSD Stablecoin Approved, XRP Climbs 15% This Week

• Ripple will debut the RLUSD stablecoin on December 17th, Tuesday.
• Ripple Payments will start using RLUSD for international payments by early next year.
• XRP rose by more than 15% in the past week post NYDFS approval of RLUSD.

American fintech firm Ripple will launch its highly-anticipated stablecoin, RLUSD, on Tuesday. This has created a bullish atmosphere for the XRP token surging more than 15% in the past week and 2.60% in the past 24 hours alone, nearing the $2.50 price level. The upcoming launch of the dollar-pegged stablecoin could drive XRP towards $3 soon.

RLUSD Aims to Dominate Cross-Border Transactions

According to Fortune , Ripple wants to become the leading network for cross-border transactions with the launch of RLUSD. The stablecoin received approval from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) last week. Initially, the stablecoin will be listed on Uphold, Bitso, MoonPay, Archax, and CoinMENA exchanges with more platforms added in the future.

Read also: Ripple’s $915M XRP Transfer Sparks RLUSD Stablecoin Optimism

Jack McDonald, the senior VP of stablecoins at Ripple, said that stablecoins are a “hybrid situation.” While they have traits similar to the United States dollar, they are “nowhere near as volatile as cryptocurrencies.” In the near future, the fintech firm will focus on connecting RLUSD with the traditional finance system.

Moreover, Ripple Payments , Ripple’s subsidiary focused on cross-border payments, will start using RLUSD by early next year. This could increase the stablecoin’s use while also driving the price of XRP higher.

XRP Price Analysis

XRP trades at $2.47 at the time of writing with a market cap of $141.2 billion and is ranked as the third-largest cryptocurrency in terms of valuation. Interestingly, the Relative Strength Index for the XRP price action reads a value of 65.34 which means that the bulls are overall in control of the altcoin’s price action and the gradient of the line suggests a move towards $2.5. 

The MACD indicator shows a bearish divergence, with the signal line (red) moving above the MACD line (blue). This means that the recent sell-off significantly impacted XRP holders. But, the two lines are moving closer to each other, suggesting a possible bullish divergence in the coming days.