Bybit launched RLUSD Hold & Earn on July 20, 2026, a month-long campaign offering up to 7% APR on held RLUSD and lower spot-trading fees on the RLUSD/USDT pair.
Key Takeaways
- Bybit opened RLUSD Hold & Earn, a month-long rewards campaign for Ripple’s stablecoin, covering a hold bonus, a fee cut, and a trading contest.
- The exchange pays a dynamic daily rate up to 7% APR on RLUSD held in a user’s account, with no staking or lock-up required.
- Bybit eliminated the RLUSD/USDT spot maker fee, previously 0.10%, and cut the taker fee from 0.10% to 0.04%.
- A separate RLUSD Trading Competition adds a 50,000 RLUSD prize pool for eligible spot traders.
- Bybit states the rewards are commercial incentives and do not constitute interest, yield, or investment returns on RLUSD itself.
What Happened?
The campaign runs from July 20, 2026, at 10:00 UTC to August 19, 2026, at 10:00 UTC, according to Bybit, and covers three linked reward tracks. RLUSD itself is a dollar-pegged stablecoin Ripple issues through a trust chartered by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), redeemable at par per Ripple’s own disclosures and backed, per NYDFS rules, by segregated dollar reserves.
Bybit Now Pays Up to 7% APR on RLUSD and Cuts Trading Fees
— CoinLaw (@coinlaw_io) July 20, 2026
Bybit’s new RLUSD rewards campaign pairs a floating hold bonus and lower trading fees with a disclaimer that the payouts are marketing incentives, not yield, on Ripple’s NYDFS-chartered stablecoin.@Bybit_Official pic.twitter.com/X7E0BQu5Pq
The hold-rewards track pays a variable daily rate. Bybit snapshots each user’s RLUSD balance once per hour, 24 times a day, then calculates the effective daily holding as the minimum balance across those 24 snapshots. Rewards credit to the user’s Main Account Funding Wallet around 06:00 UTC the next day.
Eligible balances cap at 5,000,000 RLUSD per user, and the daily APR adjusts against the remaining monthly reward budget and total platform-wide RLUSD holdings, published around 06:00 UTC each day. A loyalty multiplier rewards continuous holding days but resets immediately if a balance drops to zero.
For traders, Bybit eliminated the RLUSD/USDT maker fee, previously 0.10%, and cut the taker fee from 0.10% to 0.04%. A parallel RLUSD Trading Competition adds a 50,000 RLUSD prize pool.
| Fee (RLUSD/USDT spot) | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | 0.10% | 0% |
| Taker | 0.10% | 0.04% |
Institutional users can join Hold & Earn but are excluded from the Trading Competition. RLUSD rewards are distributed as commercial incentives and do not constitute interest, yield, or investment returns on RLUSD itself. That disclaimer, printed directly in Bybit’s own terms, sets the legal frame for the whole campaign.
RLUSD’s Regulated Reserve Meets a Promotional Yield Pitch
Per Ripple’s own product page, each RLUSD token is backed one-to-one by cash deposits, U.S. Treasuries, and cash equivalents held in reserve, and can be redeemed at par. Ripple also holds approval from the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), the regulator for Dubai’s international financial center.
That reserve structure sits in tension with the headline rate Bybit is using to market the campaign. A Treasury backed, redeemable at par instrument behaves like cash, not a yield-bearing security, which is why Bybit’s terms insist the payout is a marketing incentive rather than interest on the token itself. Framing it that way keeps the reward outside the deposit-taking and securities rules that would apply to an actual return on the stablecoin.
The dynamic APR recalculates daily against a fixed monthly reward budget, so the rate can fall as more users hold RLUSD on the platform.
Implications for the Stablecoin Reward Race
Bybit’s push comes as RLUSD’s market capitalization grew to over $1.5 billion in 2026, with expanding institutional adoption including integrations with exchanges, major banks, and financial institutions. Bybit describes itself as the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, a self-reported scale claim rather than an independently audited ranking.
Courting a regulated, bank friendly stablecoin is a deliberate positioning move. Exchanges increasingly compete on which dollar-denominated asset they can offer with the least regulatory friction, not just on trading fees. A NYDFS-chartered token gives Bybit a stablecoin partner institutional desks can hold without the compliance questions that follow less-regulated alternatives.
RLUSD is natively issued on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, giving Bybit users two blockchain rails to move the token once they collect rewards.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
This reward structure reads as a compliance aware attempt to capture stablecoin balances without tripping deposit or securities rules. Bybit is not offering interest on RLUSD. It is paying a capped, exchange funded bonus calculated off platform-wide holdings, then pairing it with a fee cut that pushes real trading volume through the RLUSD/USDT pair.
The bigger beneficiary looks like Ripple, which gets a major exchange marketing RLUSD’s dollar for dollar redemption and NYDFS oversight to a retail audience that might otherwise default to unregulated dollar tokens. The loyalty multiplier’s hard reset at a zero balance is the detail retail users are most likely to miss: any withdrawal, however small, erases accumulated holding credit toward future campaigns.
Because the daily rate floats against a fixed monthly reward budget rather than a guaranteed yield, the up to 7% APR figure functions as a ceiling that most users holding above the platform average will not reach. Reading the terms alongside the reserve mechanics matters more than the promotional rate alone.
