Ripple Moves Into Institutional Finance with $1.25B Hidden Road Deal
Ripple is making its boldest play yet to bridge traditional finance and crypto, announcing a landmark $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road—a global prime brokerage platform known for serving over 300 institutional clients and clearing more than $3 trillion in trades annually.
This acquisition marks a pivotal moment not only for Ripple but for the broader crypto space. It’s the first time a blockchain-native firm will own a full-scale, multi-asset prime broker, positioning Ripple at the center of institutional market infrastructure.
Ripple Targets Wall Street's Core Services
Hidden Road’s core offerings span foreign exchange, derivatives, fixed income, and digital assets, making it a rare all-in-one platform. By acquiring it, Ripple aims to provide institutional investors with seamless access to both traditional and crypto markets using tools and systems they already trust.
This move plugs a major hole in crypto’s adoption: institutional-grade infrastructure. Ripple plans to invest its own sizable balance sheet into scaling Hidden Road’s operations globally, potentially making it one of the largest non-bank prime brokers in the world.
RLUSD Enters the Spotlight
One of the most significant outcomes of the acquisition is the planned integration of Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD. Hidden Road will begin accepting RLUSD as collateral across its suite of brokerage services, enabling cross-margining between traditional and digital assets—a first in the stablecoin arena.
This adoption could pave the way for RLUSD to become a major player in the stablecoin ecosystem, differentiating itself through its unique institutional utility.
XRP Ledger Finally Gets a Real-World Use Case
For the XRP Ledger (XRPL), this acquisition could be a turning point. Despite its strong market cap, XRPL has suffered from weak usage metrics—posting just $44,000 in daily DEX volume as of March and trailing in validator count and smart contract activity.
Hidden Road plans to migrate its post-trade operations to XRPL, reducing operational costs while bringing real institutional traffic onto the blockchain. This could finally deliver the on-chain activity, validator engagement, and liquidity the XRP community has long been waiting for.
Ripple’s Institutional Ambitions Are Just Getting Started
In addition to brokerage services, Ripple will also offer digital asset custody to Hidden Road’s clients, signaling a deeper dive into asset management and enterprise payments. This expansion hints at Ripple’s broader ambition: to become a one-stop shop for institutional crypto finance.
By embedding its infrastructure at the core of a major prime broker, Ripple isn’t just betting on XRP or the XRP Ledger—it’s positioning itself as a critical player in the future of financial markets.