Ripple now earns prime brokerage fees after $1.25 billion Hidden Road deal
Ripple Prime is financing leveraged equity ETFs through total return swaps, putting a crypto company in a corner of Wall Street once reserved for banks
Ripple is now collecting prime brokerage fees on leveraged stock trades. The revenue comes through Ripple Prime, the rebranded version of Hidden Road. Ripple bought the multi-asset prime broker for $1.25 billion. The unit is now financing leveraged equity products, a business with deep roots on Wall Street and almost none in crypto.
How Ripple Prime makes money on leveraged stocks
By October 2026, Ripple Prime had started booking revenue from prime brokerage fees. The focus is on financing leveraged equity products, and the main tool is the total return swap.
Think of a total return swap like renting a stock instead of buying it. One party gets the full gains and losses of a stock or index. The other party, here Ripple Prime, supplies the financing and gets paid a fee for it.
One example is the Tradr 2X Long SNDK Daily ETF. The fund aims for compounded returns tied to the performance of Sandisk shares. Ripple Prime supplies the financing behind that structure.
The pricing is set at OBFR plus 4%. OBFR is the Overnight Bank Funding Rate, a benchmark for short-term borrowing between banks. On an annualized basis, that arrangement works out to about 8%.
The market for these products is not small. There are 593 leveraged ETFs in the US, holding over $256 billion in assets under management. Each of those funds needs someone on the other side of its swaps, and prime brokers fill that seat.
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From payments company to prime broker
Ripple first announced the Hidden Road acquisition on April 8, 2025. The $1.25 billion deal closed in October 2025.
With the purchase, Ripple became the first crypto platform to own and operate a global multi-asset prime brokerage. Ripple Prime covers foreign exchange, derivatives, fixed income, equities and digital assets.
The business processes over $3 trillion in annual clearing volume and serves more than 300 institutional clients. Ripple’s business has reportedly grown threefold since the acquisition.
Ripple Prime also held over $1 billion in regulatory net capital as of late 2026. A partnership with Brevan Howard for multi-asset brokerage was announced around October 6, 2026.
Where the crypto pieces fit
RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin, is being used as collateral within the business. Ripple also plans to migrate certain post-trade activities to the XRP Ledger. That remains a plan, not a finished migration, and the details of which activities move will shape how much efficiency Ripple actually captures.