Ripple officially announced on April 8, 2025 that it has acquired traditional and crypto asset broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, marking one of the largest merger deals in the history of the cryptocurrency industry. With this move, Ripple becomes the first crypto company to own and operate a global multi-asset primary broker, strengthening its position in the traditional financial sector and broadening the adoption of its stablecoin RLUSD and XRP token.
Hidden Road currently manages over $3 trillion in volume annually for more than 300 institutions, and its integration with Ripple represents a strategic step in creating the largest non-bank primary broker in the world.
The acquisition is not only a strategic market move, but also a push for the consolidation of the Ripple ecosystem, especially for the use of the stablecoin Ripple USD (RLUSD), launched in December 2024. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, highlighted on X that Hidden Road will use the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to clear a portion of its transactions, reducing settlement times from 24 hours to a few seconds, and will use RLUSD as collateral in its prime brokerage services.
During Paris Blockchain Week 2025, Ripple president Monica Long clarified that Ripple has no plans to go public in the short term, as Circle did last week, preferring instead to focus on partnerships and acquisitions (M&A) to fuel the company’s organic growth. “An IPO makes sense for companies that are looking for liquidity, but it is not our priority,” she said, confirming that Ripple is strongly committed to its strategy of expanding through targeted acquisitions.
Garlinghouse called the deal with Hidden Road a key move at a turning point for digital finance in the United States. With the end of the restrictive leadership of the former SEC led by Gary Gensler and the greater opening of the US market to cryptocurrencies, Ripple intends to use this window to accelerate the adoption of digital assets in the world of traditional finance. The CEO said that Ripple is now well positioned to “fundamentally transform the industry with the unique strength of XRP and its technologies.”
Just yesterday, the launch of the first leveraged XRP ETF in the United States, the Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF (ticker XXRP), was announced. The fund, created by asset manager Teucrium Investment Advisors, will offer 2x leveraged exposure to the daily performance of XRP and will come with a management fee of 1.85%. The launch comes shortly after the dismissal of the landmark lawsuit between Ripple and the SEC, which ended with the payment of a $50 million fine.
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