Overview
- Ripple announced on June 2 that its USD‑backed stablecoin RLUSD is now available to Turkish institutions through integrations with BiLira, Bitexen and Bitlo.
- RLUSD has grown to roughly $1.7 billion in market capitalization since its late‑2024 launch, a figure Ripple and on‑chain data cited as evidence of rapid institutional uptake.
- Ripple positions the token for enterprise use cases—payments, tokenization and on‑chain collateral—targeting corporate treasury and cross‑border settlement rather than a retail‑only rollout.
- As part of the move Ripple added Istanbul Technical University to its University Blockchain Research Initiative, funding graduate fellowships and hosting an XRP Ledger validator on campus funded in RLUSD.
- Türkiye processes nearly $200 billion in annual crypto volume and adopted a Capital Markets Board licensing framework in 2024 that creates clearer compliance paths for regulated stablecoins, though RLUSD holdings remain claims on U.S. trust reserves and carry custody and counterparty risk rather than Turkish deposit protections.