Ripple Buying Prime Brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 Billion

Ripple has acquired crypto-friendly prime brokerage Hidden Highway for $1.25 billion, marking one of many largest offers within the crypto business’s historical past. 

The blockchain expertise agency is aiming to make use of Hidden Highway’s platform to serve a variety of institutional shoppers on a much bigger scale, based on an organization statement launched on Tuesday. 

“We’re at an inflection level for the following section of digital asset adoption – the US market is successfully open for the primary time as a result of regulatory overhang of the previous SEC coming to an finish, and the market is maturing to handle the wants of conventional finance,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse mentioned Tuesday in an announcement. 

Ripple’s newest acquisition comes amid monetary establishments’ rising curiosity in digital asset-backed services and products, pushed by U.S. regulators’ diminished oversight of the crypto business. 

In a current EY-Parthenon poll of 352 institutional traders, 86% or respondents reported holding digital belongings or planning to make crypto allocations in 2025. In the meantime, traders with greater than $100 million belongings below administration invested $27.4 billion in Bitcoin ETFs, up 114% from the quantity they held within the earlier quarter, CoinShares data exhibits. 

Based in 2018, Hidden Highway affords myriad monetary providers that concentrate on institutional shoppers, together with securities lending, money administration, custodial and settlement providers and transaction financing. The agency clears greater than $3 trillion per yr throughout markets and has over 300 institutional shoppers, based on its personal knowledge. 

Ripple can also be integrating its stablecoin Ripple USD into Hidden Highway, utilizing the token as collateral throughout the prime brokerage’s merchandise. The combination could give RLUSD a aggressive edge in a crowded marketplace for dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies.  

The enterprise transfer additionally comes as merger and acquisition exercise heated up throughout the crypto business previous to the implementation of commerce tariffs by the Trump Administration which have solid doubts in regards to the international economic system. 

Final month, Kraken introduced its plans to acquire futures trading platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion in what could be the most important offers in crypto historical past. 

Sixty-two crypto merger and acquisition transactions occurred through the first three months of this yr, up from 5% from the 59 offers reported within the fourth quarter of final yr and 87% from the 33 offers logged within the third quarter of 2024, based on data from advisory agency Architect Companions.

Edited by James Rubin