Ripple Just Became a Global Prime Broker — and XRP Is at the Core of It All

• Ripple completed the $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road, and is now rebranded Ripple Prime.
• Ripple’s infrastructure control effectively places XRP/RLUSD at parity with other established asset classes.

Ripple Labs announced on April 8 that it had acquired the company that developed the cryptocurrency XRP. This was one of the biggest announcements in the digital assets industry. Hidden RoadIt is the first crypto-company to be the owner and operator of a global multi-asset Prime Broker in digital asset markets.

Ripple completed its acquisition and Hidden Road has been rebranded as Ripple Prime. Broker will provide prime brokerage services including clearing, funding, brokerage, digital assets, forex, derivatives and swaps, fixed-income, etc.

Platform already handles over 3 trillion dollars in annual transactions and has more than 300 clients around the world.

Ripple’s Expansion Strategy

Brad Garlinghouse emphasized Ripple’s long-term growth. in a statement saying,

Ripple announced today that it has acquired five major companies in the past two years.

Ripple will acquire Metaco, a Swiss provider of custody-technology in May 2023. The deal is estimated to be worth $250 Million. Ripple gained access to Metaco’s institutional custody services and banking relationships through this deal. Ripple expanded further in February 2024 with the acquisition of Standard Custody & Trust.

As reported by CNFRipple has agreed to acquire the Rail stable coin payments platform in August, for an estimated $200 million. The purchase will integrate stable currency payments infrastructure within its stack.

Most recently, Ripple’s planned $1 billion acquisition of GTreasury aims to give clients access to the multi-trillion-dollar global repo market via prime broker Hidden Road, and allow customers to get higher returns on short-term assets.

Garlinghouse is added

In order to continue building solutions that enable an Internet of Value I want to remind you all of the central role XRP plays in everything Ripple. You can lock in.

Hidden Road will use the purchase to expand Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin. The stablecoin RLUSD underpins the collateral arrangements of prime brokerage services and clients in derivatives are increasing their reserves. RLUSD adheres to stringent regulatory standards, which is a major advantage.

However, RLUSD’s market position Now, with an estimated market capitalization at $898 million and a share of 0.3%, Ripple has dropped into the $316-billion stablecoins sector. Ripple wants RLUSD to be a rival to USDC and USDT, which are both established stablecoins.

Community Concerns

Ripple’s entry into traditional finance is rekindling long-standing debates about XRP’s utility and value in the expanding Ripple ecosystem. Fishy Catfish is one community member who has questioned the value of XRP. voiced skepticism, asking, “How does the XRP token become more valuable from any of this?”

Ripple’s Prime appears more focused on enhancing RLUSD and its utility than directly boosting XRP.

Catfish points to the fact that 90% of RLUSD was issued via the Ethereum (ETH), which means it is largely independent from the XRP Ledger. Furthermore, XRP’s only built-in value mechanism —token burn from transaction fees —has had minimal impact, with just 0.014% of the total supply burned since 2012, offering little incentive value.

Lastly the community has concluded that the growth of RLUSD and Ripple’s Prime integration effort offer little direct value to XRP.

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