Ripple to Acquire Prime Broker Hidden Road in a $1.25B Deal

TL;DR

• Ripple is set to acquire Hidden Road for $1.25 billion.

• The acquisition will strengthen the company’s stablecoin push.

Ripple to Acquire Hidden Road to Boost RLUSD’s Push

Cryptocurrency giant Ripple has agreed to acquire multi-asset prime brokerage firm Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. This will make it one of the largest M&A deals in the crypto space to date.

In its press release, Ripple revealed that the brokerage firm currently processes over $3 trillion annually across foreign exchange, derivatives, digital assets, and fixed income markets. Hidden Road also has more than 300 institutional clients.

Ripple stated that,

“With the acquisition, Ripple becomes the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker. Hidden Road is one of the fastest-growing prime brokers around the world, offering institutions a one-stop-shop of advanced services including clearing, prime brokerage, and financing across foreign exchange (FX), digital assets, derivatives, swaps, and fixed income.”

Ripple will leverage this acquisition to push its RLUSD stablecoin. According to Ripple, this acquisition reinforces Ripple USD's (RLUSD) position as an enterprise-grade USD-backed stablecoin with real utility as Hidden Road leverages it as collateral across its prime brokerage products. Hidden Road will, in turn, migrate its post-trade activity across XRPL to streamline operations and lower costs.

While commenting on this acquisition, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said, 

“With the U.S. market finally opening up and digital assets maturing for institutional adoption, this is an inflection point. We are accelerating our expansion, leveraging XRP and our broader solutions to bring traditional finance and crypto closer together.” 

Ripple’s native XRP token is down 6% in the last 24 hours and now trades at $1.79.