[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong] Ripple has burned an additional 10 million dollar-linked stablecoin RLUSD tokens, maintaining its recent stance of adjusting supply. Market participants, however, are interpreting the burn as a normal supply management process tied to customer redemptions rather than as a signal of weakening demand.

On July 14 local time, blockchain outlet U.Today reported that Ripple on July 13 sent 10 million RLUSD from the RLUSD treasury to a null address, permanently burning the tokens. A null address is an unrecoverable wallet, and tokens moved there are effectively excluded from circulating supply.

The burn extends the recent trend of shrinking RLUSD supply. According to Ripple Stablecoin Tracker, a blockchain data account, Ripple burned 10 million RLUSD twice on July 10, and carried out burns of the same size on July 9, 8, 7 and 6. New issuance occurred once recently on July 6, when 20 million RLUSD was newly minted.

The repeated burns have also reduced RLUSD circulation. CoinGecko puts RLUSD market capitalisation at about $1.52 billion. That is about $380 million, or about 20 percent, lower than roughly $1.9 billion recorded in late May.

Unlike general cryptocurrencies, however, stablecoin issuance and burning are structured to match customer fund flows, making it difficult to interpret the moves simply as a supply contraction. For fiat-backed stablecoins, new tokens are issued when users deposit dollars, and tokens are burned when users redeem them for dollars. RLUSD supply is also being adjusted under this issuance-and-redemption mechanism.

Separately from supply adjustments, Ripple is also accelerating efforts to expand RLUSD use cases. The company recently announced it joined the x402 Foundation, an AI payment standards project launched by the Linux Foundation, as a premier member. Ripple said it has integrated x402 support into the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and is building an environment in which AI agents can automatically pay service fees using RLUSD and XRP.

RLUSD use is also expanding in social contribution. Ripple said the previous day it will provide grants worth $250,000 from funds raised through RLUSD donations via a partnership between its social impact programme Ripple Impact and U.S. veterans support group Hire Heroes USA.

In the market, the prevailing view is that the recent RLUSD burns reflect adjustments to circulating supply in response to shifts in demand rather than a supply contraction. Key points to watch include the pace at which RLUSD issuance and burning come into balance, and whether expanding real-world use cases such as AI payments, donations and business-to-business transactions leads to growth in circulation.