Moody’s RLUSD Rating Hits A2 Investment Grade for Ripple

Moody's RLUSD rating now puts Ripple USD at A2 for long-term deposits and P-1 for short-term deposits. Moody's Ratings calls both marks investment grade under its stablecoin framework. Standard Custody & Trust Company (SCTC), a Ripple unit, issues the dollar token on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. For firms that treat stablecoins as credit risk, the stake is a named score on reserves, liquidity, and redemptions. It is not a peg promise.

What Moody's RLUSD Rating Says About Reserves

According to Moody's ratings note, the A2 mark reflects reserve assets, market value, and cash on hand. The agency also checked legal safeguards, custody, and how SCTC runs its books.

RLUSD reserves are mostly cash and short-term U.S. Treasuries. Those assets can fund redemptions when eligible holders ask for dollars. SCTC aims for 103% reserve coverage, meaning $103 of reserves for every $100 of RLUSD. The buffer is a goal, not a shield against every loss. Price moves, thin markets, or ops failures can still hurt the token.

The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) holds most of the reserves. Moody's rates BNY Aa1, and that feeds the same view. Readers who track Standard Chartered's RLUSD custody will know the pattern. Credit scores and custody sit next to the dollar token, not inside it.

P-1 is Moody's top short-term deposit grade. A2 sits in the upper-medium band for long-term grades. Eligible holders can usually redeem RLUSD at face value within two full business days after a clean request. If the issuer goes bankrupt, payouts can slip while courts touch the reserves.

Opportunities, Limits, and What the Ratings Do Not Cover

Moody's also weighed how RLUSD reserves sit apart from SCTC's own assets. Reserves are held for holders and for redemptions. But SCTC is not bankruptcy-remote. Holders do not own the reserve assets directly today. Legal risk remains even with the safeguards.

Future scores can move with reserve quality, coverage, liquidity, and redemption speed. A major ops or cyber hit could also change the view. The marks land as Ripple pushes deeper into institutional finance. In October 2026, Ripple won final approval to form Ripple National Trust Bank. That bank is expected to hold segregated reserves and act as a collateral trustee. It should stay separate from BNY's role as primary RLUSD reserve custodian.

Ripple executive Jack McDonald has called RLUSD the first stablecoin to earn an investment-grade mark in this Moody's framework. That claim fits Moody's lens only. It is not a blanket claim across every scorecard. The ratings give firms another way to weigh RLUSD credit risk. They do not lock a $1 market price. They do not promise instant redemption. They do not shield holders from every loss.