XRP Gains Wall Street Access, Near $900M Milestone

Ripple Roars Toward $900M Milestone as XRP Gains Wall Street Access

Ripple’s push deeper into institutional finance is accelerating, with the company approaching a projected $900 million annualized product revenue run rate as custody and payment channels linked to XRP expand. The move underscores Ripple’s broader strategy of combining payments, trading, treasury management, and digital-asset infrastructure—while also reviving a long-running question among XRP holders: how directly does Ripple’s business growth benefit the token?

A Wall Street Journal story dated Oct. 7 highlighted Ripple’s growing role in providing financing for leveraged exchange-traded funds, a function more commonly associated with banks and large securities firms. This type of activity typically sits inside prime brokerage and derivatives financing, where firms earn fees by supporting clients’ positions.

Ripple’s institutional expansion has been shaped by its April 2025 announcement that it would acquire prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. The deal gave Ripple an established business serving institutional customers across foreign exchange and fixed income markets, helping position the company to offer services familiar to hedge funds and other professional investors.

In August 2026, Ripple Prime introduced its Delta One business, enabling clients to execute total return swaps tied to US-listed equities and digital assets. Total return swaps allow a fund to gain exposure to an asset’s performance through a contract with a counterparty, rather than owning the underlying asset directly.

These instruments can be used to construct the daily exposures sought by some leveraged ETFs. For example, a fund targeting twice a stock’s daily return can use derivatives to build that exposure, while the financing provider earns fees for facilitating the position.

Ripple added another institutional milestone on Oct. 6, announcing that Brevan Howard funds would use Ripple Prime for multi-asset prime brokerage and financing. The announcement signaled further traction for Ripple Prime’s offering among large asset managers operating across both traditional markets and digital assets.

Separate industry coverage has also framed Ripple’s prime brokerage strategy as benefiting from the firm’s balance sheet and from product linkages to its broader ecosystem, including RLUSD, its U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin described as “Genius-compliant,” and potential efficiencies tied to the XRP Ledger.

For XRP holders, the institutional momentum can be a mixed narrative. The company’s ability to generate revenue and win Wall Street clients may strengthen Ripple’s position in financial infrastructure, but some token holders have long questioned whether Ripple’s corporate success translates into clearer, direct value capture for XRP itself.

That tension is not new. XRP was launched with a pre-mined supply of 100 billion tokens, with 80 billion distributed to Ripple Labs and 55 billion placed into escrow to manage circulating supply. Early bank pilots tested the ledger’s speed, but broader adoption was initially limited in part because many institutions were reluctant to hold a volatile asset on their balance sheets.

Ripple’s current strategy—building institutional-grade custody, financing, and payment channels—shows how the company is positioning itself within both crypto markets and traditional finance. At the same time, it keeps the focus on an enduring debate: the distinction between Ripple’s expanding suite of financial products and the role XRP plays within that growth.