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About Hidden Road
Hidden Road, rebranded as Ripple Prime after its acquisition by Ripple, is an institutional-grade prime brokerage and global credit network. It serves hedge funds, market makers, and asset managers by providing unified clearing, financing, and credit across traditional assets (FX, precious metals, rates) and digital assets (exchanges, OTC, derivatives).
Its core value proposition is a conflict-free, quant-driven platform that offers cross-margining and collateral mobility—including using RLUSD stablecoin as margin—to solve the industry pain points of fragmented liquidity, high pre-funding requirements, and operational inefficiencies in post-trade processing. By acting as a single credit intermediary, it reduces counterparty risk and capital lock-up for institutional clients.
In the past six months (Feb–Aug 2026), Hidden Road achieved two significant milestones. In March, its US entity (Hidden Road Partners CIV US LLC) was added to DTCC's NSCC participant directory, enabling it to clear OTC trades within traditional US settlement infrastructure—a step toward integrating XRP Ledger (XRPL) into legacy post-trade rails. In August, it issued $275 million in senior unsecured notes rated BBB by KBRA, bolstering its balance sheet to expand clearing and financing services. However, its BBB rating remains sensitive to parent Ripple's dependence on XRP price performance, and the firm has yet to undergo a major systemic stress test in a severe market downturn.
Founded in 2018 by Marc Asch, Hidden Road began as a credit network for institutional investors, offering prime brokerage and financing across traditional and digital assets. In December 2022, it secured a UK FCA license as a digital asset firm, followed by Dutch AFM licenses in 2023, marking its European expansion. A pivotal milestone came in March 2025 with the launch of its fixed-income repo platform, which grew to $38 billion in notional value within a year. In April 2025, Ripple announced the $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road, completed in October, rebranding it as Ripple Prime. This acquisition integrated Hidden Road into Ripple's broader infrastructure, spanning custody, payments, and treasury management. In March 2026, Hidden Road became an NSCC participant, enabling direct U.S. securities clearing, and in June it achieved self-clearing status. That same month, it launched a digital asset swap service for U.S. institutions, expanding its derivatives offerings. These milestones reflect Hidden Road's evolution from a niche prime broker into a regulated, multi-asset clearing and financing platform, strategically positioned within Ripple's ecosystem to bridge traditional finance and digital assets.
Michael Higgins – International CEO and Global Head of Corporate Development at Hidden Road. He joined in 2019 as Partner and Head of EMEA/UK, later promoted to Global Head of Business Development, then to International CEO in October 2024. Previously, he spent over a decade at FXCM (2005–2015), rising to Director of Institutional Sales for EMEA, and later co-founded Coronam ec. He holds a BA in Economics and Statistics from Fordham University.