Is Ripple’s Hidden Road deal part of a SoftBank-like playbook?

Date: 2025-05-09

Ripple has made a slew of acquisitions to control key transaction rails and route them through XRP and its stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), drawing comparisons to Japanese investment firm SoftBank. The $1.25-billion acquisition of Hidden Road on April 8 allows Ripple to use RLUSD as collateral in the firm’s prime brokerage products. Hidden Road will also migrate its post-trade operations to the XRP Ledger, the blockchain that underpins cryptocurrency XRP (XRP) and several of Ripple’s institutional services.Omni Network co-founder Austin King knows Ripple’s strategy firsthand. He sold his startup, Strata Labs, to Ripple in 2019 and describes the approach as a “SoftBank-type” acquisition strategy.Instead of in-house development like Google or ...

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