Ripple's $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road, rebranded as Ripple Prime, has turned the company into a multi-asset prime broker, but that does not mean it has abandoned XRP. The token has cooled after a strong summer rally, and a Sept. 15 Senate vote on the CLARITY Act now looms as the next catalyst.
Ripple's expansion into prime brokerage does not signal a retreat from XRP, even as the company builds a broader institutional business around it.
Hidden Road becomes Ripple Prime
Ripple Prime is the prime brokerage business created after Ripple acquired Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, with the deal completed in October 2025. Before the acquisition, Hidden Road was already clearing more than $3 trillion annually for more than 300 institutional customers across multiple asset classes.
Ripple now describes Prime as providing multi-asset clearing, cross-margining, portfolio financing and risk-based financing across traditional and digital markets. The business sits alongside Ripple Payments, Ripple Custody and the stablecoin RLUSD, each addressing a different part of the institutional trading process.
XRP cools after a summer rally
XRP has also gone through a substantial recovery over the past several weeks, though the move has lost some momentum in September. The token began August around the $1.10 area following an extended period of weakness. It then advanced to approximately $1.42 by September 6.
The rally continued into September, with XRP briefly moving toward $1.44 on September 8 and 9 before retreating toward the $1.35-$1.37 range by September 11-12. That still leaves the token roughly 24% to 25% above its level at the beginning of August, despite the pullback.
On-chain reports cited in the source indicate that during the rise from $1.00 to $1.70, wallets holding between one million and 10 million XRP increased their combined positions by 642 million tokens. Markets are now watching a Sept. 15 procedural vote in the US Senate on the CLARITY Act, which would define the legal status of digital assets and split regulatory authority between the SEC and CFTC.
Still Ripple's 'North Star'
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has previously called XRP the company's "North Star," saying, according to U.Today: "It's our purpose." He has described payments, Prime, treasury, custody and RLUSD as efforts to drive utility, trust and liquidity around XRP and the XRP Ledger.
A multi-asset prime broker does not automatically create demand for any single cryptocurrency, and institutional clients can use the platform without making XRP central to their strategies. What the evidence shows is that Ripple's business is becoming less dependent on any one product, even as XRP remains part of its broader institutional strategy.
Source: U.Today
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