Hitting Institutions: What is Ripple Prime Brokerage?

Ripple Prime Brokerage, marketed as Ripple Prime, is Ripple's institutional-grade global multi-asset prime brokerage platform, and the first such platform owned and operated by a crypto-native company. It came together through Ripple's purchase of Hidden Road, an established non-bank prime broker, and now offers clearing, financing, execution, and risk management across both traditional and digital markets.

For a company best known for cross-border payments and the XRP Ledger, owning a full prime broker is a different kind of bet. It puts Ripple in the same room as Goldman Sachs and Coinbase Prime, competing for the hedge funds and trading desks that move serious capital.

How did Ripple build a prime broker?

@Ripple announced the $1.25 billion Hidden Road acquisition on April 8, 2025, at Paris Blockchain Week, one of the largest deals in digital assets to date. The deal closed on October 24, 2025, and Hidden Road was rebranded as Ripple Prime that same day. Ripple has since put roughly $500 million of capital into the business, with another $500 million expected later in 2026, according to Kroll's rating report.

Hidden Road was not a startup. It was already clearing more than $3 trillion a year across roughly 300 institutional clients when Ripple announced the deal, a piece of plumbing traditional finance has leaned on for decades.

What does Ripple Prime actually do?

Ripple Prime works as a single point of access for institutions that would otherwise juggle multiple counterparties, custodians, and venues. Its services span:

• Multi-asset coverage: digital assets including OTC spot, FX, precious metals, exchange-traded derivatives, OTC swaps, and fixed income repo.
• U.S. digital asset spot prime brokerage, launched November 3, 2025, with OTC spot execution for dozens of major cryptocurrencies, including $XRP and the RLUSD stablecoin. U.S. clients can cross-margin those holdings against the rest of their portfolio.
• Financing and margin: portfolio and risk-based margin financing with cross-margining, real-time risk management, sponsored access, and direct market access.
• Compliance: SOC 2 Type II compliant, with a conflict-free brokerage model.

It targets hedge funds, asset managers, trading firms, and family offices, the clients who want integrated access rather than a patchwork of providers.

How big has it gotten?

Ripple Prime has tripled its revenue year over year, client collateral has doubled, and average daily transactions now run past 60 million, per Ripple's own figures.

Two milestones in 2026 matter more than the raw figures. In April, Kroll Bond Rating Agency assigned Ripple Prime an investment-grade BBB issuer rating, the first crypto-affiliated prime broker to earn one. That rating counts because pension funds, insurers, and regulated banks can only deal with investment-grade counterparties under their own rules, so it opens doors that were previously shut.

Then on May 11, 2026, Ripple Prime closed a $200 million asset-backed debt facility from Neuberger Specialty Finance, part of Neuberger Berman. The capital is earmarked for margin financing capacity to keep pace with client demand.

How does Ripple Prime fit with the rest of Ripple?

Ripple Prime is the distribution channel for $RLUSD, Ripple's dollar-backed stablecoin, which clients already use as collateral for derivatives and prime brokerage products. Some derivatives customers choose to keep their balances in RLUSD.

The platform also integrates with Ripple Custody for secure storage, and Ripple has said it plans to use the XRP Ledger to streamline post-trade workflows such as FX, swaps, and repo over time, reducing costs and friction.

Recent integrations follow the same pattern. In February 2026, Ripple Prime added support for Hyperliquid, giving institutions access to on-chain derivatives liquidity. In April it integrated Bullish for $BTC options trading, with RLUSD usable for trades. And on May 19, 2026, it connected with EDX Markets and EDXM International for spot and perpetual futures liquidity, with RLUSD lined up as a future settlement and collateral asset on the venues.

It is the same playbook traditional prime brokers ran for decades, only this time the firm building it also owns the settlement rails. 

Sources:

• Ripple official press release announcing the May 19 EDX Markets and EDXM International integration for spot and perpetual futures liquidity.
• Finance Magnates on the completed Hidden Road acquisition and same-day rebrand to Ripple Prime.
• LiquidityFinder on the November 3 launch of U.S. digital asset spot prime brokerage capabilities.
• Crypto Briefing on the Kroll BBB investment-grade issuer rating and Ripple Prime's capital position.
• Finance Magnates on the $200 million Neuberger Specialty Finance debt facility.