Ripple, the leading provider of digital asset infrastructure for financial institutions, today announced it is acquiring Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, representing one of the largest deals in the digital assets space. 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.

For the crypto industry to achieve the next phase of growth, it’s critical that core infrastructure is in place for institutional adoption; prime brokers bring the necessary credibility and professional trading services expected in legacy finance to digital assets. Together, Ripple and Hidden Road are bringing the promise of digital assets to institutional customers at scale, bridging traditional finance and decentralized finance.

Hidden Road has a strong business, clearing $3T annually across markets with more than 300 top institutional customers. With the backing of Ripple’s significant balance sheet, Hidden Road will exponentially expand its capacity to service its pipeline and become one of the largest non-bank prime brokers globally.

“We are at an inflection point for the next phase of digital asset adoption – the US market is effectively open for the first time due to the regulatory overhang of the former SEC coming to an end, and the market is maturing to address the needs of traditional finance,” said Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple. “With these tailwinds, we are continuing to pursue opportunities to massively transform the space, leveraging our position and the strengths of XRP to accelerate our business and enhance our current solutions and technology.”

This acquisition also 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. This will make RLUSD the first stablecoin to enable efficient cross-margining between the digital asset space and traditional markets.