Earlier this year, Ripple announced its intent to acquire Hidden Road, one of the fastest growing non-bank prime brokers in the world, offering institutions a one-stop-shop for advanced services including clearing, prime brokerage, and financing across foreign exchange (FX), digital assets, derivatives, swaps, and fixed income.
The acquisition is complete, and Hidden Road is now Ripple Prime. This is an exciting new chapter for Ripple, making it the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker, and bring the promise of digital assets to institutional customers at scale. In fact, since the initial announcement of the acquisition, Ripple Prime’s business has grown by 3X, and additional growth for new and existing customers is expected.
The synergies between the two businesses made this acquisition a logical next step to support institutional adoption of digital assets. Ripple’s foundational digital asset infrastructure across payments, crypto custody and stablecoin, as well as the use of XRP, will complement the services offered within Ripple Prime. In the future, Ripple Prime will look to leverage blockchain capabilities in its business to streamline operations and optimize costs.
Ripple Prime will significantly enhance the utility and reach of Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD. Today, RLUSD is being used as collateral for a number of prime brokerage products. Certain derivatives customers have already opted to hold their balances in RLUSD, which is expected to grow substantially in the coming months.
RLUSD's robust regulatory compliance has made it widely trusted by institutions, providing them with the necessary assurance to integrate it into their financial operations. In July, RLUSD was ranked the number one stablecoin for stability, governance and asset backing by Bluechip who gave it an ‘A’ rating. Ripple also announced that The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY) will serve as the primary reserve custodian of RLUSD, underscoring Ripple’s commitment to meeting the highest expectations of institutional users and regulators.
This is one of five major acquisitions by Ripple in the past two years, including an announcement to acquire treasury management system provider GTreasury last week, stablecoin-powered payment platform, Rail, in August 2025, the acquisition of Standard Custody in June 2024 and Metaco in May 2023.
In many ways, the two companies are cut from the same cloth and have a shared DNA—from a similar global footprint with offices around the world, to a joint passion for and strength in technology, risk management and operational controls.
Both teams are excited for continued integration throughout the year, with Hidden Road Founder and CEO Marc Asch working directly alongside Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and the rest of the leadership team.
Learn more about Ripple Prime or contact the team to get started on your digital asset journey today.
