Ripple to launch RLUSD Tuesday, monthly attestations to follow

Ripple's much anticipated U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin has a launch date: Dec. 17.

"RLUSD will be available on global exchanges starting tomorrow," Ripple said in a statement Monday. "Each RLUSD token is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, U.S. government bonds, and cash equivalents."

An independent auditing firm will be tasked with creating attestations of RLUSD’s reserve assets to promote transparency, added Ripple. The attestations will be published monthly.

Ripple is joining a competitive field of stablecoin issuers that includes other well-funded crypto firms like Tether , Circle and Ethena. Traditional fintech PayPal also launched its own dollar-pegged stablecoin. With a supply of over $140 billion issued, Tether is currently the clear market leader.

"Early on, Ripple made a deliberate choice to launch our stablecoin under the NYDFS limited purpose trust company charter, widely regarded as the premier regulatory standard worldwide," Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in Monday's statement. "As the U.S. moves toward clearer regulations, we expect to see greater adoption of stablecoins like RLUSD."

Last week, Ripple secured the final approval for RLUSD from the New York State Department of Financial Services.

The company said that by early next year, Ripple Payments will utilize RLUSD to complete transactions for its enterprise customers. "Ripple Payments has served $70 billion in payments volume," Ripple said in its statement.

Initially, RLUSD will be available on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. Ripple has said , however, that it "plans to expand to additional blockchains and decentralized finance protocols and apps over time."

Ripple also said the stablecoin will initially be "available on Uphold, MoonPay, Archax, and CoinMENA, with additional listings on platforms such as Bitso, Bullish, Bitstamp, Mercado Bitcoin, Independent Reserve, Zero Hash and others expected in the coming weeks."