Ripple has completed its purchase of global prime brokerage Hidden Road and renamed the business Ripple Prime, a trading, financing and clearing desk for institutions, the company announced on Friday.
Ripple said the new unit’s business has tripled since the initial announcement and that Ripple Prime now serves more than 300 institutional clients with more than $3 trillion settled across all markets.
The company positions Ripple Prime as an all-in-one service spanning digital assets, currencies, exchange-traded derivatives, over-the-counter swaps, fixed income clearing and repos, as well as precious metals, citing SOC 2 Type II compliance, real-time risk management and cross-margining.
What prime brokerage means in simple terms: For funds and market makers, a prime brokerage is a comprehensive intermediary. Instead of juggling multiple exchanges, lenders and custodians, a client uses a single desk that provides market access, spreads financing so that trades are not completely pre-funded, handles post-trade clearing and settlement, and adds collateral and risks between positions.
In traditional finance, such consolidation can reduce friction and improve balance sheet efficiency. Ripple says that Ripple Prime brings a similar model to digital assets along with FX and derivatives.
Today’s update follows Ripple’s April 8 announcement that it intended to acquire Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. At the time, Ripple framed the deal as the first crypto company to own and operate a global multi-asset prime broker.
“We are at an inflection point for the next phase of digital asset adoption,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an April 8 press release. Hidden Road founder Marc Asch said the combination would “unlock significant growth” by adding licensing and venture capital, according to the same statement.
Ripple also says the prime brokerage unit will deepen the role of RLUSD, its US dollar stablecoin. The fintech firm says some derivatives clients already have RLUSD balances and use them as collateral for prime brokerage products.
Ripple previously named BNY Mellon as RLUSD’s primary reserve custodian and noted an “A” rating from researcher Bluechip in July 2024 for its stability, governance, and asset support.
The launch of Ripple Prime extends Ripple’s institutional push beyond payments and custody to a broader set of broker-dealer-like services expected by large trading firms.
Whether assets and collateral migrate at scale will depend on customer demand, market conditions, and Ripple Prime’s performance against existing major brokers in both cryptocurrency and forex. For now, Ripple’s pitch to institutions is a one-stop shop for access, funding and risk controls, with the ability to use a company-issued stablecoin as collateral.
