Robinhood Adopts Ripple's RLUSD Stablecoin and Treasury Stack

Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin went live Tuesday on Robinhood Chain and on the Bitstamp exchange, and is expected to reach the main Robinhood app later this year, according to Ripple's announcement. The deal makes Robinhood, the trading platform with 28.6 million funded customers, a user of Ripple's stablecoin, its treasury software and its prime brokerage simultaneously. In plain terms, Robinhood has just handed a significant slice of its cash-management and settlement plumbing to the company whose founders created XRP.

RLUSD is a stablecoin, a token designed to hold a value of one U.S. dollar, allowing money to move on a blockchain without waiting for banks to open. Ripple launched the token in December 2024 and says its market capitalization now exceeds $2.5 billion — roughly the annual budget of a mid-sized American city, and a figure Ripple itself supplies rather than an audited number. Stablecoin issuers face recurring questions about reserve quality, and Tuesday's announcement said nothing about the composition of RLUSD's backing.

What is Robinhood actually buying?

Three distinct products are in play.

• RLUSD, now live on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp, with main-app distribution expected later this year.
• Ripple Treasury, software for managing corporate cash — payments, cash-flow forecasting and risk — including intercompany netting, which offsets what a company's own divisions owe each other so fewer payments move.
• Ripple Prime, a prime broker that lends and clears trades for large institutions, already supplying Bitstamp with lending and margin financing across roughly 20 digital assets.

Ripple Prime clients also gain spot trading on Bitstamp, and perpetual futures — contracts that never expire — will be supported there later this year. The takeaway: this is a full-stack relationship, not a single listing.

The settlement layer and the acquisition trail

Robinhood will use RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, the blockchain behind XRP, for institutional settlement — the step where a large trade is finalized and paid for — across Bitstamp's institutional business. That routes a meaningful share of Bitstamp's settlement flow through Ripple's own ledger. Most of Bitstamp's volume comes from institutions, so the operational exposure is concentrated where the money is largest.

The corporate lineage matters. Ripple paid $1.25 billion for Ripple Prime in a deal announced in April 2025, when the firm was still called Hidden Road. Robinhood closed its roughly $200 million purchase of Bitstamp — one of the world's longest-running crypto exchanges — in June 2025. Two acquisitions, one integrated stack.

Johann Kerbrat, senior vice president and general manager of Robinhood Crypto and International, framed the arrangement in expansive terms. "Utility is what moves stablecoins forward. Working with Ripple, Bitstamp and Robinhood will have access to RLUSD for institutional settlement, Ripple Treasury for our operations, and Ripple Prime for financing," Kerbrat said. "That is what a connected, global financial system looks like." That is a vision statement, not a disclosure; neither company published financial terms, integration timelines beyond "later this year," or volume commitments.

A reversal with history

The partnership marks a notable reversal. Robinhood pared back its crypto listings during the SEC's enforcement campaign against Ripple and other crypto firms, and only added XRP for U.S. customers in November 2024, after a court had narrowed the regulator's case. Now Ripple's software will help run Robinhood's own treasury department. The company that once faced delisting pressure from U.S. regulators is now inside a major U.S. broker's back office.

The timing is also commercially convenient. Robinhood cut about 10% of its staff in June after revenue in its crypto transaction business fell 34% year over year in the first quarter, to $134 million — a drop of roughly $69 million in a single quarter. Outsourcing treasury infrastructure to a vendor reduces internal build costs, though it also concentrates operational dependence on one counterparty.

What comes next

Robinhood reports third-quarter results after the market closes Tuesday, the first report covering a full quarter since Robinhood Chain launched on July 1. Expect the RLUSD rollout to the main app, plus perpetual futures at Bitstamp, as the near-term milestones; both carry only "later this year" commitments, which is a promise without a date.