Reddit Post Sparks Debate on Whether Ripple’s Own Stablecoin Kills the XRP Use Case

A Reddit post has sparked debate inside the XRP community after a user spent two to three hours running XRP’s investment thesis through both Claude and DeepSeek, prompted by a German finance analyst setting a $9 mid-term price target for the token.

What the AI returned was not reassurance. It was a list of structural concerns.

The RLUSD Question

Banks hate volatility. XRP’s original use case was as a bridge currency providing liquidity between fiat pairs via a brief token hop. But Ripple now offers RLUSD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin running on its own infrastructure.

“Ripple is pushing its own stablecoin (RLUSD). Banks hate volatility. Why would they voluntarily take on the price risk of XRP for their transactions when they could just use Ripple’s software to send a price-stable RLUSD? Doesn’t this mean the XRP token loses its most important institutional use case, or am I missing something here?”

If banks can settle transactions using Ripple’s software with a stable asset, why would they voluntarily absorb XRP’s price risk? The post argued this potentially removes XRP’s most important institutional use case by design, replaced by a product Ripple itself created.

The SWIFT and Chainlink Alternative

The AI raised a competing thesis. SWIFT serves over 11,000 institutions globally and is increasingly connecting to blockchains through Chainlink’s oracle infrastructure rather than replacing its existing rails. Analysts cited in the discussion put LINK’s five-year target at $100 to $150 from a current $9 price, with the mathematical argument being that a 10 to 15x move requires significantly less capital than XRP reaching $9.

The AI also flagged heavy sell pressure clustered between $2.40 and $3.00 from long-term holders, making a clean breakout structurally difficult.

The post concluded by framing this as two competing philosophies for global financial settlement, with the implicit suggestion that only one model will ultimately dominate. Ripple is building the rails and the asset, and SWIFT is evolving through Chainlink integration while keeping its existing infrastructure intact.