Here’s Why Stablecoins Cannot Make XRP Obsolete in Cross-Border Payments

XRP community members have repeatedly praised XRP’s ability to facilitate cross-border payments, especially through Ripple Payments

Notably, this has been one of the most-highlighted utilities for XRP. However, some critics believe the rise of stablecoins, which promise similar capabilities without price swings, could make XRP unnecessary

Is Ripple Pivoting Away from XRP?

One of the individuals pushing this narrative is Vibhu Norby, Head of Product Marketing at the Solana Foundation, who recently shared his opinions on the Paul Barron Network.

In response, host Paul Barron said RLUSD already boasts $1 billion in value. He explained that Ripple seems to be building a full financial infrastructure where the XRP Ledger has an important role.

Barron said if Ripple executes this plan well, it could finally deliver what the company has been working toward. He also noted that Ripple must move past its legal troubles and deal with an American political environment that has often been hostile toward crypto.

According to Barron, this new phase represents a fresh opportunity for all tokens with real-world use cases, including XRP and Solana. Notably, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has also reaffirmed that the firm is not pivoting away from XRP.

Stablecoins Do Not Make XRP Obsolete

He believes that when this happens, the world will still need a bridge asset to connect different currencies because not all currency pairs are equally liquid. According to him, the initial liquidity would attract more liquidity for XRP, leading to greater adoption.

Meanwhile, Molly Elmore of Valhil Capital also argued that claims suggesting that sovereign stablecoins would make XRP obsolete ignore an important economic reality

She questioned how stablecoins could fix the long-standing Triffin Dilemma. Elmore explained that it’s not in the interest of the United States to keep serving as the world’s main reserve currency issuer, and China wouldn’t want that role either because it would hurt its export industry.

The Triffin Dilemma

The Triffin Dilemma is the conflict when one crypto tries to be both a scarce global reserve asset (like gold) and an everyday payment currency (like the dollar). Notably, to stay scarce and valuable, it needs a low supply and high price, making people hoard it instead of spending it.

However, for daily use, it needs stability and cheap transactions, which pushes fees up or forces more issuance, which hurts scarcity.

Bitcoin picked “digital gold,” so on-chain coffee payments became impossible. Meanwhile, Ethereum tried both and saw gas fee chaos. Also, stablecoins have fixed volatility but added centralization. Essentially, no single chain can perfectly do both without painful trade-offs.

Another investor who responded to Elmore agreed, saying that stablecoins don’t solve this fundamental problem. Instead, they only digitize it