How Ripple plans to bridge crypto and Wall Street in its $4B expansion

"Ripple is positioning itself for a bigger role in traditional finance. In an interview at Swell 2025, the company described its roughly $4-billion acquisition spree as the foundation for moving institutional money on the XRP Ledger alongside existing banking workflows. The push comes after a new $500-million raise at a reported $40-billion valuation, a deal to acquire multi-asset prime broker Hidden Road for about $1.25 billion, and a Ripple USD (RLUSD) pilot with Mastercard, WebBank and Gemini aimed at settling card payments onchain."

"Prime brokerage and credit: Ripple agreed to acquire non-bank prime broker Hidden Road for about $1.25 billion, giving institutions unified market access, clearing, financing and, where supported, the option to use RLUSD as eligible collateral. Treasury software integration: A roughly $1-billion deal for GTreasury connects Ripple to corporate treasury management system (TMS) and ERP workflows, including cash positioning, foreign exchange, risk management and reconciliation. This allows onchain settlements to be reflected within existing finance systems."

Ripple is consolidating roughly $4 billion of acquisitions to build an integrated institutional stack combining custody, prime brokerage, payments and treasury tools on the XRP Ledger. The plan pairs Metaco custody, Hidden Road prime services, GTreasury TMS integration and Rail’s payments capabilities to enable onchain settlement that maps into existing ERP and treasury workflows. RLUSD pilots with Mastercard, WebBank and Gemini aim to settle card payments and corporate payouts onchain and then synchronize results back into corporate systems. Scaling requires clear reserves, strict compliance, transparent accounting and measurable, consistent real-world transaction volume, with success seen in faster settlements and lower costs.

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