Dollar-Stablecoins Will Win Everything
And That's Exactly How XRP Wins
TL;DR
90 % of global payments will soon run on USD-stablecoins. The counter-revolution won’t come from Switzerland, Europe or Japan.
It will come from an asset without a flag - that Ripple is currently fattening with dollar traffic.
2030: The Absorption Is Already Complete
Imagine 2030.
USDT, USDC, and RLUSD run 90% of all global cross-border transactions - from Lagos to Tokyo, from São Paulo to Singapore. Europe has finally launched its “regulated” EURC. Japan has its JPYC. Switzerland even managed a CHF-stablecoin with 200 million in volume.
Nobody uses them.
Instead, everything flows through dollar rails. The USD has won. Digital colonialism is complete.
And then?
A bridge asset emerges. No flag. No central bank. Three-second settlement. Transaction burns that make it deflationary over time. It doesn’t peg to anything - it bridges everything.
It’s called XRP.
Not as a stablecoin competitor. As the neutral layer underneath all stablecoins.
This is not science fiction. This is XRPL, 2025.
The rebellion that eats the dollar - without ever pegging to it.
Part 1: The Total USD Absorption
(And RLUSD as the Trojan Horse)
Emerging Markets: Already Captured
Let’s start with the obvious: The Global South has already surrendered to the dollar.
Turkey 2025: 68% of all stablecoin transactions are USDT/USDC. Not because Turks love America - because they hate watching their lira lose 40% per year. Argentina’s peso is a joke currency used only for government salaries and taxes. The real economy runs on dollars, and increasingly, on dollar-stablecoins.
Nigeria banned crypto. Then unbanned it. Then regulated it. Then gave up. Now Lagos street vendors quote prices in “USDT equivalent.” Lebanon is the most brutal example: After the banks froze withdrawals in 2019, an entire generation learned that “your money in the bank” is a polite fiction. Today, Lebanese remittances flow through Binance, not SWIFT.
This isn’t adoption. This is absorption. And it’s irreversible.
Europe & Japan: The Slow Bleed
“But surely developed economies are different?”
They’re not. They’re just slower.
German savers spent a decade earning negative interest rates. The ECB literally charged them to save. When neobanks offered USDC savings products with 4-5% yields, the response was predictable: Millions of Europeans quietly moved their emergency funds out of Euro deposits.
Japan’s situation is even more absurd. The yen has lost 35% against the dollar since 2021. Japanese retirees - famously conservative savers - are discovering that their lifetime savings buy less imported food every month. The smart ones are hedging. The hedge is USDC.
The “retail flight” isn’t a future risk. It’s a present reality measured in billions per quarter.
RLUSD: Ripple’s Brilliant Double-Play
And now Ripple enters the game with RLUSD.
On the surface, it looks like capitulation: Ripple, the company that spent years fighting for XRP, launches a... dollar stablecoin? Critics called it a pivot. A surrender. An admission that XRP failed.
They’re wrong. RLUSD is a Trojan Horse.
On the surface Ripple is doing exactly what everyone expected: they’re launching their stablecoin first and loudest on Ethereum, Base, and every hot chain that gives them instant liquidity. The press releases scream „multi-chain“, the volume charts light up on Uniswap and Curve, and the usual suspects cheer „Ripple finally surrendered to ETH“.
That’s the bait.
Because every single one of those RLUSD tokens can be ported 1:1 onto XRPL in under five seconds using the built-in AMM and the upcoming EVM sidechain. Every liquidity pool that gets seeded on Ethereum today becomes a pre-financed on-ramp liquidity for XRPL tomorrow. Every institutional partner that integrates RLUSD „on Ethereum“ is quietly being walked toward Ripple Payments – which settles natively in XRP.
Ripple isn’t abandoning XRPL.
They’re doing the oldest trick in the empire-building book:
let the enemy pay to build your roads first.
Ethereum is currently the marketing budget and the distribution engine. XRPL is the endgame highway that was already waiting. The more RLUSD succeeds anywhere, the more capital, tooling, and mindshare eventually flow straight into the XRP ledger.
The dollar traffic is welcomed with open arms – and then routed through a toll booth that burns XRP with every single transaction.Trojan Horse accepted. Gates wide open.
The army inside doesn’t carry a flag.
The Scale Paradox: Why This Loop Has No Ceiling
Every dollar that flees into USD-stablecoins strengthens the dollar. More demand for USDT/USDC/RLUSD means more demand for Treasury bills. More Treasury demand means lower yields for the US government. Lower yields mean America can run bigger deficits. Bigger deficits mean more dollar liquidity. More liquidity means stronger network effects.
This is a positive feedback loop with no natural ceiling.
Circle and Tether have accidentally created the greatest monetary export scheme in history. Ripple is now joining them - while quietly building something that could outlast the dollar itself.
Part 2: Why the “Good” Fiats Have No Chance
(CHF, EUR, JPY: Beautiful Losers)
Nov 25th, 25 - a reader (@massimillennium) asked me whether Swiss Franc stablecoins would eventually win because Switzerland has superior fiscal discipline.
The answer is no. Not even close.
They’re Still Political Weapons
The fantasy of “neutral” European or Swiss money collapses on first contact with reality.
The EU could freeze Greek or Italian bank accounts tomorrow if Brussels decided it was necessary for “financial stability.” They’ve done it before (Cyprus 2013). The Swiss “joined” Western sanctions against Russia despite their famous neutrality. The Bank of Japan intervenes in currency markets whenever the yen moves too fast.
These currencies are not neutral. They’re just smaller weapons wielded by smaller powers.
And here’s the contrast: XRP on XRPL? When Western sanctions hit Russia in 2022, the ledger kept running. No pause button. No political override. Because there’s no one to call.
No Global Narrative
Ask someone in Manila what they think of the Swiss Franc. Blank stare.
The dollar is a global shared fiction. It’s the language of trade from Lagos to Lima. It’s what rappers brag about, what movies visualize as wealth, what your brain defaults to when thinking about “rich.”
The Swiss Franc is an elite abstraction - wonderful for Zurich private bankers, invisible to the other 7.9 billion humans.
Stablecoins need mass belief. You can’t manufacture that with a whitepaper. You need 80 years of cultural embedding, Hollywood, petrodollar deals, and military bases in 80 countries. Nobody else has it.
No Power Projection
Switzerland has 8 million people and no aircraft carriers. The EU has 27 armies that can’t agree on lunch. Japan’s constitution technically prohibits offensive military operations.
The dollar became the reserve currency because America could enforce it. Bretton Woods wasn’t a polite suggestion - it was backed by the only industrial economy left standing after WWII and the only military that could project power globally.
Currencies don’t win by being fiscally responsible. They win by being unavoidable. And unavoidability requires either power - or perfect neutrality.
The Neutrality Paradox
Neutrality is only attractive as long as you have no enemies. The moment you become globally relevant, you acquire enemies - and then you need either real power or real neutrality.
Swiss neutrality is marketing. When push came to shove (Russia sanctions), Switzerland folded in weeks. If CHF-stablecoins ever became large enough to matter, Switzerland would face impossible pressure from both Washington and Beijing.
Success would destroy the very neutrality that made it attractive. A 700B GDP economy cannot remain neutral while holding 3T in global monetary infrastructure.
Part 3: The Neutral Rebellion
(XRP as the Blueprint)
So if national currencies can’t compete - not the weak ones, not the “good” ones - what can?
The answer isn’t another government’s money. The answer is something that doesn’t need government backing at all.
A true challenger to USD hegemony must achieve four things simultaneously - something no national fiat can ever do. Let’s check XRP against each criterion:
Criterion 1: Absolute Neutrality
No nation-state can shut it down. No government can sanction it. No central bank can inflate it.
XRP Score: 8.5/10
XRPL is decentralized enough that no single entity controls it. The SEC tried for four years and failed - programmatic sales ruled not securities. Russia sanctions? The ledger kept running. China crackdowns? Nodes everywhere.
The honest caveat: Ripple Labs holds significant XRP and has the highest vested interest in the ecosystem - but they’re one validator among many on XRPL, not a central controller. They could fork their own chain tomorrow; they couldn’t stop XRPL if they tried. This is fundamentally different from USDT (Tether = God Mode) or CBDCs (Central Bank = God Mode).
Important distinction: Remaining regulatory questions (Clarity Act, potential Ripple banking license) are Ripple-the-company issues, not XRPL-the-protocol issues. The ledger’s neutrality is independent of Ripple’s corporate fate.
Criterion 2: Global Transaction Scalability
USDT processes more daily volume than most national payment systems. A true competitor needs to match or exceed this.
XRP Score: 9/10
XRPL handles 1,500 TPS with 3-4 second finality. That’s faster than Visa’s average and already battle-tested. Transaction costs are fractions of a cent.
The honest caveat: Peak demand hasn’t stress-tested the network at SWIFT-level volumes yet. But the architecture is proven.
Criterion 3: Stability Without Government Backing
This is the hard one. Bitcoin is neutral but too volatile. Algorithmic stablecoins exploded (RIP Terra). Over-collateralized stablecoins work but depend on other stablecoins.
XRP Score: 6/10 (improving)
XRP volatility is still 10-15% - better than Bitcoin’s 20%+, but not stablecoin-level. You can’t pay rent with an asset that might drop 8% overnight.
Yes, XRP today isn’t money for rent. But USDT in 2017 wasn’t money for rent either. The difference: USDT became stable through Treasuries. XRP becomes stable through transaction volume - and that volume is currently exploding.
Here’s the thesis: Stability will emerge from massive real utility. As XRPL handles more institutional settlement, more remittances, more RLUSD traffic - XRP’s role as a bridge asset creates constant buy/sell pressure that dampens volatility. This is already happening: XRP’s 30-day volatility has declined consistently as transaction volume increased.
The honest caveat: We’re not there yet. XRP in 2025 is a speculative asset with utility characteristics. The question is whether utility can grow fast enough to dominate the price action.
Criterion 4: Competitive Network Effects
USDT has 10+ years of Lindy. Every exchange lists it. Every trader’s mental model includes it.
XRP Score: 7/10
XRP has its own Lindy - since 2012. It survived the ICO crash, the SEC lawsuit, multiple bear markets. 300+ financial institutions have tested or deployed Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity. It’s listed on every major exchange globally.
The honest caveat: Network effects in retail trading are weaker than USDT. Most users still think of XRP as “the Ripple coin” rather than “the neutral settlement layer.” The narrative needs to catch up to the reality.
The Scorecard
Neutrality: 8.5/10
Scalability: 9/10
Stability: 6/10 (improving)
Network Effects: 7/10
Total: 7.6/10 — Not perfect. But closest to the blueprint of anything that exists.
The pieces are there. The synthesis is happening. In real-time.
Part 4: The Honest Take
(What Could Go Wrong)
I’m not a moonboy. Janus watches with two faces, and the skeptical face sees real risks:
Risk 1: Volatility Doesn’t Decline Fast Enough
If XRP stays at 10-15% volatility, it remains a speculation, not a settlement asset. Institutions need predictability. The thesis depends on utility-driven stability emerging - and that’s not guaranteed.
Risk 2: Ripple Association Hurts Narrative
If Ripple makes a strategic error or faces new regulatory pressure (Clarity Act, banking license), the narrative around XRP could suffer - even though XRPL would keep running. The ledger is independent; the brand perception isn’t. Most people still say “Ripple” when they mean “XRP.”
Risk 3: Something Better Emerges
Crypto moves fast. A new chain could solve the stability problem more elegantly. XRP’s 7.6/10 might be beat by a 9/10 we haven’t seen yet.
Risk 4: USD Dominance Lasts Longer Than Expected
Maybe USDT/USDC/RLUSD are “good enough” for 50 years. Maybe the neutral rebellion never reaches critical mass. Path dependency is real.
The 10th Man Position: XRP is the best current candidate for the Neutral Rebellion - but “best current” doesn’t mean “guaranteed winner.” The thesis is probabilistic, not prophetic.
The Janus Lens: Two Futures Converging
Janus watches this with both faces, as always.
One face sees the conquest: USD-stablecoins becoming the global base layer. Digital Petrodollar 2.0. Every emerging market absorbed. RLUSD joins USDT and USDC in total domination. America wins the 21st century without firing a shot—Ripple, Circle, and Tether did the work for them.
The other face sees the rebellion: Underneath all those 80+ dollar-stablecoins, a neutral bridge asset quietly becomes indispensable. The more RLUSD succeeds, the more transactions flow through XRP. The more transactions, the more utility. The more utility, the more stability. The more stability, the more adoption.
The greatest irony: Ripple’s own USD-stablecoin is building the infrastructure for XRP to eventually make USD-stablecoins obsolete. They’re laying the tracks for a train they don’t fully control.
The Successor Won’t Have a Flag
When the neutral currency arrives - and it will arrive - it won’t be the Chinese yuan. It won’t be a BRICS basket. It won’t be the euro “getting its act together.”
It will be something without a national anthem. Something that exists because millions of people use it, not because a government mandates it. Something that derives stability from utility, not from Treasury Secretary press conferences.
XRP is currently the closest approximation to that vision. Not perfect. Not complete. But live, functional, and improving.
The Neutral Rebellion won’t be led by a country. It will be built by engineers, adopted by refugees, and ignored by governments until it’s too late to stop.
If You’re Building Today
Don’t build the 127th fiat-peg.
If you’re building another fiat-peg today - EURC, CHFC, GYEN, whatever - you’re building another province for the dollar empire. Another tributary. Another colony with a different flag but the same master.
If you’re building on XRPL, you’re building infrastructure for the first truly flagless world currency.
Choose.
The colony or the escape route.
There is no third option.