Ripple has announced its plans earlier this year to acquire Hidden Road, one of the non-bank prime brokers, providing institutions a “one-stop-shop” for services such as clearing, prime brokerage, and financing across foreign exchange, digital assets, derivatives, swaps, and fixed income.
Ripple noted in a blog post that the acquisition is complete, and Hidden Road is now doing business as Ripple Prime. This is now a new chapter for Ripple, making it among the first crypto companies to own and operate a multi-asset prime broker, and bring the so-called “promise” of digital assets to institutional clients.
Since the first announcement of the planned acquisition, earlier in 2025, Ripple Prime’s business has grown steadily, and additional growth for new as well as existing clients is being forecasted.
The so-called “synergies” between the businesses made this acquisition a logical next step to support institutional adoption of digital assets.
Ripple’s digital asset infrastructure across payments, custody and stablecoin, as well as the use of the XRP token, will now aim to complement the services provided within Ripple Prime.
In the foreseeable future, Ripple Prime will aim to leverage DLT / blockchain capabilities in its business to enhance operations and lower costs.
Ripple Prime will aim to improve the utility and reach of Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD. Currently, RLUSD is being used as collateral for various prime brokerage products.
Certain derivatives clients have opted to hold their balances in RLUSD, which is set to grow in the coming months.
RLUSD’s regulatory compliance has made it “trusted” by institutions, offering them with the assurance to integrate it into their operations.
Earlier, Ripple had announced that The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY) will act as the primary reserve custodian of RLUSD, highlighting Fintech Ripple’s commitment to meeting the expectations of institutional users as well as regulators.
This is one of several acquisitions by Ripple in the past couple years, including an announcement to acquire GTreasury, stablecoin-powered payment platform, Rail, in August 2025, the acquisition of Standard Custody in June 2024 and Metaco in May of 2023.
In many ways, the firms are said to be “cut from the same cloth” and have a shared DNA—from a similar global presence with offices across the globe, to a joint objective to enhance technology, risk management and operational controls.
Both teams are pleased about focusing on the integration throughout the year, with Hidden Road Founder and CEO Marc Asch working with Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and other members of leadership team.
