As the saying goes…
“First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then they add you to the S&P 500.”
…or something like that.
Today, @Ripple announced the acquisition of Hidden Road for $1.25B, one of the largest deals ever in the crypto space. But the price tag isn’t what’s most important – it’s that this deal marks a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for crypto to access the largest and most trusted traditional markets, and vice versa.
Prime brokers (along with other key functions historically managed by banks for the most part) like Hidden Road have proven themselves as *the* trusted intermediary for the largest hedge funds, market makers, OTC desks, quant traders and more. Ripple has been a customer of Hidden Road for years, and we know their breadth of expertise firsthand, clearing $3 TRILLION annually for 300+ of the top financial institutions globally.
This is the capital and activity that will tap into XRP and the XRP Ledger’s bread-and-butter – instant, efficient, scalable and low cost movement of value. Instead of waiting for <24 hours to settle trades through fiat rails, Hidden Road will be using XRPL for clearing a portion of trades, and most consequentially, using RLUSD as collateral across its prime brokerage services, including cross-asset (crypto and traditional instrument) trades.
With this deal and the backing of Ripple’s significant balance sheet, Hidden Road will exponentially expand its capacity to service its pipeline and become the largest non-bank prime broker globally.
Ripple and Hidden Road combined are a generational leap forward, ready to truly bring the worlds of traditional and decentralized finance together. https://t.co/UYOOyQ21dG
Ripple’s acquisition of Hidden Road is a defining moment for the XRP Ledger and XRP. The prime broker clears upwards of $10B and processes over 50M transactions a day on various traditional rails, waiting up to 24 hours for those transactions to settle. Now imagine even a portion of that activity on the XRP Ledger – and that’s exactly what Hidden Road plans on doing – not to mention future use of collateral and real-world assets tokenized on the XRPL.
Today, Ripple moves forward—stronger than ever. This landmark case set a precedent for the domestic crypto industry.
With the SEC dropping its appeal, Ripple is now in the driver's seat and we’ll evaluate how best to pursue our cross appeal. Regardless, today is a day to celebrate this victory.
This is it – the moment we’ve been waiting for. The SEC will drop its appeal – a resounding victory for Ripple, for crypto, every way you look at it.
The future is bright. Let's build.
I’ve said this before - the crypto industry will achieve our goals (and beyond), IF WE WORK TOGETHER. Appreciate the crypto President @realDonaldTrump’s vision of a govt digital asset reserve representative of the industry.
Maximalism is the enemy of the industry’s progress. Glad to see POTUS recognizing we live in a multichain world and that we’re finally moving past Bill Hinman and the Biden administration's SEC’s very broken thinking.
I will certainly continue to champion this while in Washington at the end of this week.