Ripple first announced plans for RLUSD in April, positioning it as a competitor to Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. By August, Ripple began testing the stablecoin on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum mainnets.

In October, the company revealed partnerships with major exchanges, including Uphold, Bitstamp, Bitso, MoonPay, Independent Reserve, CoinMENA, and Bullish. Ripple executives have projected RLUSD could achieve a market capitalization of $2 trillion by 2028.

BeInCrypto reported earlier that NYDFS was in the process of approving the Ripple stablecoin in the first week of December. However, delays in regulatory checks raised concerns that the approval might not come before Christmas.

So, today’s approval was a sudden surprise to the market, and XRP’s price has responded accordingly. XRP surged nearly 10% within an hour of the NYDFS announcement. Earlier in the day, the token briefly dipped below $2.

Donald Trump’s re-election in November has driven renewed optimism among the XRP community. Last month, the current SEC chair Gary Gensler announced his resignation, who has been a constant critique of Ripple.

Under Gensler’s direction, Ripple has been enduring a lengthy legal battle with the SEC. However, these regulatory challenges are likely to ease, as Trump recently appointed pro-crypto candidate Paul Atkins.

Also, Ripple reported significant growth in Q3, fueled by higher transaction volumes on the XRP Ledger and rising institutional interest in its XRP token.

During Q3, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) introduced an XRP reference price, while Bitnomial disclosed plans to launch an XRP futures product. Other financial institutions, including Bitwise, Canary Capital, WisdomTree, and 21Shares, filed applications for XRP ETFs.

Grayscale also launched an XRP Trust and initiated efforts to convert its Digital Large Cap Fund—comprising BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, and AVAX—into an ETF.