Who earns the interest on RLUSD's reserves, and does any of it reach XRP holders?

The full answer

In the issuer’s July 2026 report, whose asset table has not yet passed our quote check, most of the reserve behind RLUSD sat in short-term US government debt, which pays interest.[11] This page sets out who the documents say keeps that interest, how large it could be, and whether any of it reaches XRP holders.

What do RLUSD’s terms say about reserve income?

They give it to Ripple. The RLUSD user terms state: “Ripple is entitled to and may withdraw from the Reserve all net returns earned on assets held in the Reserve to the extent not required to maintain the Reserve at the minimum market value.”[1] The terms set that minimum at a market value “at least equal to the number of then outstanding RLUSD multiplied by one (1) U.S. dollar.”[1] They add that RLUSD “does not convey any direct or indirect property interest in or right to withdraw any assets held in the Reserve.”[1]

The issuer is Standard Custody & Trust Company, a subsidiary of Ripple Labs.[2] Who can hand RLUSD back for dollars is covered on the page about redemption and issuer failure. Nothing in the terms gives holders a share of reserve income.

How much could the reserve earn?

The issuer’s August 2026 reserve report valued the reserve at $2,446,312,864 on August 31, 2026, against 2,325,969,308 RLUSD outstanding.[2] Its breakdown by asset class is printed as an image that our text check could not read. The issuer’s July 2026 report broke down the July 31 reserve as follows:[11]

That July table has not yet passed our quote check. In August 2026, Treasury’s daily rate for 13-week bills, on a coupon-equivalent basis, ranged from 3.78% to 3.87%.[4] Trading Economics showed the three-month yield at 4.18% when we read it at 19:29 UTC on September 29, 2026.[5]

Our estimate: at 3.8% a year, the $2.45 billion reserve of August 31 earns about $93 million a year before costs. The July 31 Treasury bill holding alone would earn about $41 million. Ripple’s dashboard showed $2,517.7 million in reserve funds on September 3, 2026, a company-reported figure from Ripple’s transparency page.[3] At the same rate, that would be about $96 million a year.

These are gross figures. Money-market funds and cash may earn less than bills. We did not find custody fees, bank charges or payments to distribution partners in the Ripple transparency, stablecoin and legal pages we searched on September 29, 2026, so these costs are not established either way. Rates also move, so the figure scales up or down with them.

Do RLUSD holders get any of it?

The issuer’s terms give holders no right to reserve assets or their returns. OKX offered RLUSD holders on its platform 3.5% APR, or 4.2% for VIP users, with a 10% APR promotion on the first 10,000 RLUSD for VIP users from August 20 to September 18, 2026. OKX says it “reserves the right to determine and amend the rules of the campaign at any time without further notice.”[6] Zodia Custody pays “monthly discretionary rewards for select RLUSD holders,” limited to institutional clients, with “no contractual entitlement.”[7]

As of September 29, 2026, neither OKX’s nor Zodia’s page says Ripple funds these rewards, and we found no Ripple statement on it either.

Federal law limits the issuer. The GENIUS Act says no permitted issuer “shall pay the holder of any payment stablecoin any form of interest or yield (whether in cash, tokens, or other consideration) solely in connection with the holding, use, or retention of such payment stablecoin.”[9] WilmerHale’s summary reads it the same way.[8] How regulators will treat rewards paid by platforms, rather than by the issuer, was not settled in the sources we could check as of September 29, 2026.

Does any of it reach XRP holders?

No. The RLUSD terms send net reserve returns to Ripple and give XRP holders no share of them.[1] Ripple’s XRP page describes Ripple as a technology company “whose solutions use XRP, RLUSD, and other digital assets.”[10] Owning XRP is not owning Ripple, as the page on whether XRP is ownership in Ripple explains. XRP holders are not party to the reserve arrangement at all.

This is one part of a wider issue: Ripple’s businesses can grow without value passing to the token. The page on XRP’s value-capture problem takes that up.

What is the case that RLUSD still helps XRP holders?

The counter-argument is indirect. This view assumes RLUSD circulates as a dollar asset on the XRP Ledger, which we have not verified from Ripple’s own pages as of September 29, 2026. Ripple’s XRP page says XRP is the native token that “facilitates transactions on the network” and “bridges currencies in the native decentralized exchange.”[10] On that view, more stablecoin activity on the ledger can mean more trading against XRP and more use of the network. The page on why stablecoins may matter for XRP liquidity weighs that argument. It is a claim about trading activity. It does not give XRP holders any share of reserve interest.