Ripple has joined the Prime Unicorn Index of top-valued private companies just as it completed a landmark tokenized U.S. Treasury redemption pilot with JPMorgan Chase and Mastercard, settling the asset leg on the XRP Ledger in under five seconds.
"Ripple Prime has built an innovative brokerage platform combining fintech-grade technology and agility with bank-level compliance and operational rigor,” said Peter Sterling, Head of Neuberger Specialty Finance, highlighting the institutional appeal that has driven Ripple's growth.
The May 6 pilot saw Ripple redeem a portion of its holdings in Ondo Finance’s OUSG, a tokenized fund of short-term U.S. Treasuries, on the XRP Ledger. The transaction was notable for its hybrid structure: the asset leg settled in 4.2 seconds on the public blockchain using Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, while the fiat leg was routed by Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network to JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform, which delivered U.S. dollars to Ripple's bank account in Singapore through its correspondent banking network. The pilot's success validates a model for near-instant, cross-border settlement of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) outside of traditional market hours.
The inclusion in the Prime Unicorn Index, which tracks U.S. private companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more, places Ripple alongside firms like OpenAI, SpaceX, and Stripe. This recognition follows a period of aggressive institutional expansion, including the $1.25 billion acquisition of prime brokerage Hidden Road (now Ripple Prime) and a $500 million funding round that valued Ripple at $40 billion.
The core innovation of the May 6 pilot was connecting a public blockchain directly to institutional banking rails for a continuous, near-real-time settlement flow. Previously, tokenized asset redemptions involved a fast on-chain transaction followed by a slow, disconnected process to move fiat currency through the banking system, which could take one to three business days.
This pilot merged the two. The process worked as follows:
This architecture demonstrates a compliant pathway for institutions, using a regulated stablecoin (RLUSD) for the on-chain leg while keeping the final fiat payout within established, trusted banking infrastructure.
For XRP holders, the pilot's impact was muted. The token’s price saw a negligible 1% move to around $1.42 on the news. This follows a consistent pattern where significant institutional adoption of the XRP Ledger has not directly translated to a higher XRP price.
The settlement's design clarifies why. The primary bridge asset was RLUSD, a stablecoin fully backed by U.S. Treasuries and regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS). For institutional products like Ondo's OUSG, which is itself backed by BlackRock's BUIDL fund, the price stability and regulatory clarity of a stablecoin are non-negotiable. XRP's price volatility makes it unsuitable for this role.
However, the pilot provides a significant credibility boost for the XRP Ledger. The successful integration with JPMorgan's Kinexys platform, a cornerstone of the bank's $3 trillion settlement ecosystem, serves as a powerful proof-of-concept for other financial institutions considering the use of public blockchains for RWA tokenization. This validation may prove more valuable to the ecosystem in the long term than any short-term price movement.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
