Ripple Prime clears $3 trillion as XRP holders wait for institutional flow

Ripple bought a $1.25 billion prime broker and wired it into Wall Street's clearing system. The XRP token has yet to benefit.

XRP traded near $1.13, down 70% from its 2025 peak, as Ripple Prime cleared more than $3 trillion in trades and secured a seat in the DTCC's tokenization working group alongside JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock.

"Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana tokenizing anything of value as collateral for margin and settlement is the next step," Mike Higgins, CEO of Ripple Prime, said in May.

The brokerage, rebranded from Hidden Road after Ripple's $1.25 billion acquisition closed in October 2025, now serves more than 300 institutional clients. It entered the NSCC participant directory under identifier RIPL on March 2, 2026, and gained access to the FICC's Government Securities Division. The DTCC named Ripple Prime to its 50-firm Industry Working Group for tokenization in May, and the clearinghouse began a limited production pilot of tokenized Russell 1000 equities, ETFs and Treasuries this month.

The migration of Ripple Prime's post-trade activity onto the XRP Ledger can succeed without driving demand for the token, because the asset doing the settlement work inside Ripple's own product stack is predominantly RLUSD, its dollar stablecoin. For XRP to capture any of the flow, outside banks and clearing firms must accept it as collateral — and so far, none have.

Three Paths, One Narrow Route

There are exactly three mechanical routes by which Ripple Prime's volume can create demand for XRP, and each is currently narrow. The first is ledger fees: every transaction on the XRP Ledger burns a fraction of a cent, and the total burn since 2012 amounts to roughly 14 million XRP, worth about $15 million at today's price. Even trillions in settlement volume would generate fee demand measured in thousands of dollars a day.

The second is collateral. Ripple Prime accepts XRP as margin within its own brokerage, backed by a $200 million credit line from Neuberger Specialty Finance. But that is Ripple's own brokerage accepting Ripple's own asset — a circular loop that does not constitute third-party demand. No outside bank has agreed to accept XRP as collateral, and no major clearing firm takes it as margin.

The third is settlement, and here the finding is the most consequential: RLUSD, Ripple's dollar stablecoin, carries the money. The stablecoin crossed $1.7 billion in market capitalization within a year of launch and processed more than $18 billion in transfer volume in a single quarter. It is the margin asset on partner venues, the settlement leg in Ripple's pilot with JPMorgan and Mastercard, and the cash instrument across Ripple Prime's product suite. XRP's volatility — the token has lost 70% of its value from its peak — disqualifies it from the cash leg by definition.

The Seat at the Table

The bullish argument does not dispute the accounting. It argues about position. Ripple bought its way into the only room where the rules for tokenized securities are being written, at the only moment the writing is happening. No other crypto-native company holds an NSCC credential, an FICC seat and a working-group chair simultaneously.

The DTCC's tokenization service launches in two phases: a limited pilot this month and a full rollout scheduled for October. If the eventual standard is multi-ledger, as many expect, then eligibility becomes the prize, and Ripple Prime exists to make the XRP Ledger operationally proven when the flow starts to move.

The Stellar precedent offers a concrete comparison. When the DTCC announced in late May it would integrate the Stellar network as the first public blockchain in its multi-chain strategy, XLM rallied more than 80% in days. XRP has received no equivalent confirmation — only adjacency through a broker owned by the ledger's biggest patron.

The first outside bank that accepts XRP as collateral, or the first clearing firm that takes it as margin, would turn the plan into demand for the token overnight. Until that first yes arrives, Ripple Prime remains a booming business for Ripple and a promise for XRP.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.