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Ripple to Acquire Prime Broker Hidden Road for $1.25B, Expanding Institutional Push

What to know:

  • Ripple has agreed to buy prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion.
  • CoinDesk reported last week that Hidden Road was in takeover talks.

Ripple agreed to acquire multi-asset prime brokerage firm Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, marking one of the largest M&A deals in the digital asset industry to date.

Hidden Road clears over $3 trillion annually across foreign exchange, derivatives, digital assets and fixed income markets, with more than 300 institutional clients, according to a press release, which didn't specify the funding terms of the deal.

The agreement comes hot on the heels of last month's deal by crypto exchange Kraken to buy NinjaTrader, a U.S. futures trading platform, for $1.5 billion. Few crypto deals with announced values have topped $1 billion. Among them, payments processor Stripe finalized a deal to buy stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion last year. In 2021, Galaxy Digital (GLXY), a crypto financial services company, agreed to buy custody specialist BitGo for $1.2 billion in a deal it abandoned just over a year later.

“With the U.S. market finally opening up and digital assets maturing for institutional adoption, this is an inflection point,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in a statement.

“We are accelerating our expansion, leveraging XRP and our broader solutions to bring traditional finance and crypto closer together,” Garlinghouse added.

Ripple said it will inject fresh capital into Hidden Road to expand its clearing, prime brokerage, and financing operations, aiming to make the firm the largest non-bank prime broker globally.

The deal also strengthens Ripple’s stablecoin ambitions. Hidden Road will use Ripple’s U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, as collateral across its prime brokerage platform. That makes RLUSD the first stablecoin enabling efficient cross-margining between traditional and digital asset markets, Ripple said.

Hidden Road also plans to migrate its post-trade operations onto the XRP Ledger (XRPL), aiming to reduce costs and streamline settlement processes. Ripple expects the move will further showcase XRPL as a blockchain optimized for institutional DeFi use cases.

Ripple, which participated in Hidden Road’s Series B round and has been a customer of its platform, said the deal is expected to close in the coming months pending regulatory approvals. The company currently holds over 60 regulatory licenses globally.

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