Ripple Labs has announced a major acquisition to shock the market out of an otherwise dreadful week. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), the crypto firm announced that it has acquired Hidden Road, a brokerage, clearing, and financing firm as it moves forward in its mission to become the leader for institutional investors moving into the digital assets space.
Ripple Acquires Hidden Road For $1.25 Billion
The Tuesday announcement by Ripple has further solidified the mission that the crypto firm has long put forward, and that is to provide instant and quick transfer of value for traditional and institutional investors coming into the digital assets space.
As CEO Brad Garlinghouse explained in a separate X post, the decision to acquire Hidden Road for $1.25 billion comes after a long-standing customer relationship with the company. Garlinghouse revealed that Ripple understands the breadth of Hidden Road’s expertise, making it a prime candidate for the acquisition.
The integration of the XRP Ledger by Hidden Road will allow for cheap and fast movement of value to the brokerage’s customers, which moves over $3 trillion annually. A portion of this massive value is expected to move through the ledger, as well as using the RLUSD stablecoin as collateral for brokerage services.
Additionally, Hidden Road will be able to expand its capacity for value transfer, allowing Ripple to process even more volume. “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,” Garlinghouse’s post read.
This acquisition comes after Ripple acquired Standard Custody back in February 2024. Standard Custody provided an online platform offering clients digital asset custody solutions, enabling Ripple to move into the custody market as well.
XRP Price Responds
Despite the Ripple announcement, the XRP price has remained muted as it continues to struggle below $2, which has since turned to resistance. At the time of writing, XRP is still holding at $1.96, despite its almost 10% in the last 24 hours.
According to data from Coinmarketcap, the XRP daily trading volume has seen a notable decline, dropping approximately 24% in the last day. This suggests a decline in participation from investors, due to the bearish headwinds that continue to blow through the crypto market.
A recovery from here is highly dependent on Bitcoin, which continues to dominate the market and lead the charge.
Chart from Tradingview.com
