Ripple said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, marking the crypto firm’s largest acquisition to date and one of the biggest deals in the digital assets sector.
Founded in 2018, Hidden Road provides clearing, financing, and prime brokerage services across multiple asset classes, including foreign exchange, digital assets, derivatives, swaps, and fixed income.
The firm currently clears over $3 trillion annually for more than 300 institutional clients, including hedge funds.
The deal surpasses Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge earlier this year and signals Ripple’s deepening focus on infrastructure to support institutional adoption of crypto.
Details of Ripple-Hidden road deal
The acquisition strengthens Ripple USD’s (RLUSD) standing as an enterprise-grade, USD-backed stablecoin with real-world utility, as Hidden Road plans to use it as collateral across its prime brokerage services.
This move positions RLUSD as the first stablecoin to support efficient cross-margining between digital assets and traditional financial markets.
As part of the partnership, Hidden Road will shift its post-trade operations to the XRP Ledger (XRPL), aiming to streamline workflows and reduce costs, highlighting XRPL’s potential as a preferred blockchain for institutional DeFi.
Ripple also anticipates leveraging this integration to improve cost efficiency and liquidity in its cross-border payments platform, Ripple Payments, while offering institutional-grade custody solutions to Hidden Road’s clients.
“With new resources, licenses, and added risk capital, this deal will unlock significant growth in Hidden Road’s business, allowing us to increase capacity to our customer base, expand into new products, and service more markets and asset classes,” said Marc Asch, Founder and CEO of Hidden Road.
The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals, and the transaction is expected to close by the third quarter of 2025.
The move comes shortly after Ripple secured a key legal victory when the US Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a long-running lawsuit that had accused the firm of conducting an unregistered securities offering.
The resolution removed a major overhang for the company and could pave the way for more aggressive expansion.
Improving regulatory climate for crypto
The broader crypto sector has also been buoyed by the re-election of Donald Trump, who has expressed support for digital assets and pledged more favorable regulatory policies.
“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.”
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