XRPL’s $1.34 billion stablecoin base doesn’t tell us how much XRP users need

Tracked stablecoins on the XRP Ledger totaled $1.338 billion on Oct. 7. For XRP holders, the critical question is how much activity uses the token as principal, and how long users or intermediaries need to hold it.Fees and account reserves require XRP, the ledger's native token. Stablecoins, tokenized funds and securities records can keep their principal in other assets. Bridge routes and XRP-funded liquidity pools create a separate reason to hold XRP: inventory available to fill trades or payments.DefiLlama's XRPL dashboard showed Ripple's dollar stablecoin RLUSD accounting for 93.17% of tracked stablecoins. The same snapshot reported $43.44 million in value locked in decentralized finance, $3.91 million in 24-hour decentralized-exchange volume and $528 in 24-hour chain fees.Each reading measures a different part of the ecosystem. Stablecoin supply is a balance, trading volume is turnover, and fees are a cost. Adding them together would mix those units and could count the same assets more than once.Ripple's Oct. 1 transparency figures put total RLUSD circulation at $2,509.8 million, backed by $2,633.8 million in reserve funds. These issuer-wide figures cover RLUSD across its suppo...