Ripple has agreed to purchase Hidden Highway, a crypto prime dealer, in a deal value $1.25 billion. It is among the largest acquisitions within the crypto sector—behind solely Kraken’s $1.5 billion buy of NinjaTrader and barely forward of Stripe’s $1.1 billion deal for Bridge. A separate $1.2 billion deal, involving Galaxy Digital’s curiosity in BitGo, was mentioned however by no means finalised.
The Ripple-Hidden Highway settlement highlights two key factors: the rising dominance of crypto prime brokers and the rising function of stablecoins.
Whereas the stablecoin aspect includes enabling Ripple’s stablecoin for use as collateral throughout Hidden Highway’s providers, the true takeaway is the growing significance of prime brokers.
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Establishments Drive Demand for Prime Brokers
Prime brokers play a key function in monetary markets, together with the rising crypto sector, by providing a full vary of providers akin to buying and selling, custody, and lending to main establishments like hedge funds, banks, and personal fairness companies.
Banks are main gamers within the prime brokerage trade. Their world attain, entry to capital, and robust danger programs make them well-suited to help institutional buying and selling wants. Nonetheless, in relation to crypto, banks are hesitant to behave as prime brokers as a result of regulatory uncertainty, excessive market volatility, and considerations round custody and compliance. The dearth of clear guidelines and the chance of publicity to unregulated belongings make conventional banks cautious about getting into the crypto prime brokerage house. Goldman Sachs is a traditional instance which re-launched its conventional prime brokerage providers in 2020 however has been sluggish to increase into crypto.
As conventional banks have been sluggish to have interaction with crypto dangers, crypto-focused prime brokers have stepped in to satisfy rising institutional demand. Hidden Highway, based in 2018 by Marc Asch, gives clearing, prime brokerage, and financing throughout international trade, digital belongings, derivatives, swaps, and fixed-income markets.
🚨 Right here is the total speech of @MonicaLongSF about @Ripple buying Hidden Highway for $1.25B👇How RLUSD shall be used ?!Will XRP be concerned on this deal ?Is quantity on the XRPL going to blow up ?Examine and repost the video guys 👇 pic.twitter.com/knOQ1WP7aM
— Arthur (@XrpArthur) April 8, 2025
As a result of these providers want massive quantities of capital, Ripple has agreed to inject billions into Hidden Highway to supply speedy scale and meet market demand.
Hidden Highway at present clears $3 trillion yearly throughout all markets and serves over 300 main institutional shoppers. With Ripple’s backing, the dealer plans to develop its capability to serve much more shoppers sooner or later.
You might also like: “Demand from Very Massive Establishments” Drives Hidden Highway’s Mounted Revenue Launch in 2025
A Rising Group of Prime Dealer Unicorns
Hidden Highway will not be the one billion-dollar crypto prime dealer. FalconX, backed by GIC, leads the pack with an $8 billion valuation. It posted document development in Q2 2024, with income growing 2.5 instances in comparison with the identical interval in 2023. In keeping with its web site, FalconX had accomplished over $1.5 trillion in buying and selling quantity by the top of 2023 and serves greater than 600 institutional shoppers.
Matrixport is one other unicorn within the house, valued at over $1 billion. Final September, it acquired the asset administration arm of Crypto Finance, which is owned by Deutsche Börse Group.
New companies are additionally getting into the house. Final yr, Tim Grant—former CEO of SIX Digital—launched a crypto prime brokerage and now leads the $1 billion funding agency Deus X Capital as its CEO.
“Conventional banks will finally supply crypto prime brokerage providers after regulatory readability,” Grant advised Monetary Information. “However that’s not occurring within the subsequent two to 3 years. It is going to take time. Crypto-native brokers now perceive how far behind the standard gamers are, and so they’re profiting from that.”
In the meantime, established names like Coinbase are additionally specializing in institutional shoppers. In This autumn 2024, the Nasdaq-listed trade earned $141 million in institutional transaction income, a 156 per cent rise from the earlier quarter.
In its shareholder letter, Coinbase added that its “onboarding pipeline stays sturdy” as extra prime shoppers undertake its Prime providers throughout custody, buying and selling, financing, and staking.
This text was written by Arnab Shome at www.financemagnates.com.
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