Points of Focus 

• Chainlink analyst argues stablecoins have become the dominant “bridge currency” for payments.
• XRPL ranks low in usage, developer activity, and DeFi TVL.
• Ripple criticized for socializing costs to XRP holders while privatizing gains for equity shareholders.

A Chainlink analyst, Zach Rynes, has publicly argued that USD-backed stablecoins have already displaced the “bridge currency” role that XRP was originally designed to fill more than a decade ago.

The crux of the argument

In a detailed thread that generated a heated debate on X, Zach contends that the market has built everything XRP was meant to achieve: connectivity, interoperability, privacy, compliance, and orchestration. He argued that all this was accomplished without the need of XRP. 

Instead, he said, stablecoins now dominate as the neutral settlement layer for cross-border payments, trading and finance. This has seen global transaction volume reaching $33 trillion in 2025, up 72% year-over-year, and stablecoins accounting for 30% of all on-chain activity.

The bizarre retail thesis of $XRP is that it will become the global reserve currency that everything trades against, the so-called “XRP standard”

Rather than trading Dollars for Euros directly, you would trade USD for XRP, and then XRP for EUR, because this makes payments…

— Zach Rynes | CLG (@ChainLinkGod) March 15, 2026

The analyst points out that XRPL ranks outside the top 40 chains by usage, developer activity, and DeFi TVL, holding less than 1% of the RWA market and under 0.01% of stablecoin supply. Institutions like Swift, DTCC, JPMorgan, and BlackRock focus on modern infrastructure rather than a single bridge asset. A key example cited is Hyperliquid, where all positions across commodities, equities, FX, and crypto are traded against USD stablecoins to minimize liquidity fragmentation.

The thread also criticizes Ripple’s business model, claiming it socializes development costs to XRP holders via token sales, all the while privatizing revenue for equity shareholders. RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin, has reached over $1.3 billion in market cap but holds 90% of its supply on Ethereum and other chains, creating little to no XRP demand. 

Similar patterns are noted across Ripple’s acquisitions and products, where funding from XRP supports initiatives that generate returns primarily for Ripple equity holders.

Zach’s argument Vs Ripple’s position

The analyst’s critique points to a distinct shift toward stablecoin dominance in global finance, where USD-pegged tokens have become the practical bridge asset due to liquidity, regulatory clarity, and institutional adoption. XRPL’s low market share and RLUSD’s multi-chain deployment support the argument that XRP’s bridge role has not materialized as envisioned. 

$100B+ processed.
60+ markets.
51 real-time rails.
RLUSD at $1B market cap in under a year.

Ripple Payments brings it all together: fiat, stablecoins, 75+ licenses, so businesses can move money globally without the patchwork: https://t.co/f5yXTWOPQk pic.twitter.com/1IpEci84d4

— Ripple (@Ripple) March 9, 2026

However, Ripple has consistently maintained that On-Demand Liquidity and growing institutional partnerships drive their XRP utility, with the company positioning itself as a full-stack payments infrastructure provider. 

Within the short-term, XRP price remains decoupled from Ripple’s $100B+ volume milestones. In the long-term however, regulatory clarity and ETF inflows are poised to play a huge role in how things unravel. At the moment, the market structure tells a clear story: raw stablecoin utility is simply overtaking legacy bridge narratives.