Ripple has expanded its institutional prime brokerage offering by enabling clients to trade real-world asset (RWA) perpetual swaps that track traditional financial instruments.
Announced on October 15, 2026, the initiative through Ripple Prime gives professional traders continuous access to more than one hundred reference markets spanning individual equities, equity indices, exchange-traded funds, metals, energy products, and foreign-exchange pairs.
Trading and settlement run without interruption, including weekends, removing the constraints of conventional exchange hours.The new swaps are executed with Ripple Prime serving as the principal counterparty.
Their pricing references perpetual futures contracts listed by Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives platform known for high performance.
This structure delivers exposure to movements in traditional assets without conferring ownership of the underlying securities or commodities and without requiring physical delivery.
Because the referenced contracts trade continuously and carry no fixed expiration, institutions can maintain or adjust positions as market conditions evolve outside standard trading windows.
Michael Higgins, international chief executive of Ripple Prime, described the product as the point where conventional markets intersect with digital infrastructure.
He noted that institutions seek exposure to equities, commodities, and currencies combined with the efficiency and continuous availability of blockchain-based systems.
Ripple Prime was designed to operate across both environments, drawing on experience in clearing, collateral management, and risk oversight that functions around the clock.
The RWA swaps, he added, allow clients to pursue more advanced strategies and respond actively to shifting global conditions.
Additional operational advantages include cross-margining of the new positions against other asset classes already supported on the platform. Eligible clients may also post Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin as collateral, subject to jurisdictional availability.
Together these features produce a single counterparty relationship, centralized risk oversight, and consolidated margin across an institution’s overall portfolio, reducing the need for separate collateral pools at multiple venues.
Market-making firm Virtu is among the early users.
Scotte Moegling, head of business development for digital assets at Virtu, observed that the firm is increasing activity across emerging liquidity pools and that Ripple Prime’s continuous cross-margining capability supports more efficient expansion as markets move toward nonstop access.
The launch coincides with rapid growth in trading activity for perpetual futures linked to real-world assets over the course of the year.
Ripple Prime presents the new service as part of its broader commitment to deliver high-demand products and venues inside a unified, capital-efficient prime-brokerage framework suited to digital markets.
The offering is currently provided under the firm’s Credit Intermediation Vehicle license in the British Virgin Islands, with plans to extend availability to additional regions in the near term.
By connecting institutional clients to continuous traditional-asset exposure through a familiar prime-brokerage relationship that references Hyperliquid-listed contracts, the development illustrates ongoing convergence between established finance and decentralized infrastructure.
Institutions gain the ability to manage risk and deploy capital across both traditional and digital environments without being limited by fixed trading schedules or fragmented margin arrangements.
