Ripple Labs, a crypto firm that powers the XRP cryptocurrency, has announced its strategic acquisition of Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. The acquisition is one of the biggest deals in the cryptocurrency landscape. With this purchase, Ripple becomes the first crypto-focused firm to own and control, an international, multi-asset brokerage firm.
Hidden Road is one of the quickest rising prime brokers across the globe, providing financial institutions with all-one shop of high value-added services, including clearing, prime brokerage, and financing across crypto assets, fixed income, swaps, derivatives, and foreign exchange (FX).
Spur institutional crypto adoption
This acquisition is a great milestone that is primed to enable the cryptocurrency industry to accomplish the next stage of growth. Prime brokers are a key infrastructure for institutional adoption. They bring essential trustworthiness and professional trading services operating in traditional finance to the cryptocurrency world. With this integration, Hidden Road and Ripple are bringing the value of crypto assets to institutional clients on a large scale, developing the connection between traditional finance and DeFi.
Hidden Road owns a powerful business, clearing $3 trillion yearly across various markets with over 300 major institutional clients. This prime broker firm has demonstrated to be reliable intermediary for major hedge funds, market makers, OTC desks, quant traders, and many more. A much more interesting thing is that Ripple has been a client for Hidden Road for multiple years.
Bridging TradFi and DeFi
Hidden Road is the resource and operation that will leverage XRP and XRP Ledger’s low-cost, speed, scalable settlement system alternative to SWIFT’s traditional payment methods. While SWIFT relies on pre-financed accounts and slow settlements that take more than 24 hours to clear, XRP-focused blockchain system offers instant, affordable cross-border payments. Rather than waiting for more than 24 hours to settle trades through fiat money, Hidden Road will leverage XRP Ledger to clear trades instantly.
This integration also strengthens Ripple’s USD (RLUSD) status as an institutional-grade stablecoin with real-world application as Hidden Road will use the stablecoin as collateral across its prime brokerage products. This arrangement is set to make Ripple USD the first stablecoin to facilitate efficient cross-margining between conventional markets and crypto assets.
With this partnership and the support of Ripple’s strong financial backing, Hidden Road will tremendously broaden its ability to serve its customers and become the biggest non-bank prime brokerage firm internationally. Ripple and Hidden Road are therefore becoming a revolutionary force that is set to unlock the bridge between traditional finance and DeFi.
