A recent important acquisition by Ripple, one of the US-based payment technology companies, created a stir in the digital asset ecosystem. Hidden Road, known for its secret liquidity and prime brokerage services, changed its name to Ripple Prime after joining Ripple. Ripple Prime, a critical actor in the industry in terms of infrastructure services offered to corporate users, was recently added to the official directory of the US National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC).
Process of Ripple Prime being added to the NSCC List
The addition of Ripple Prime to NSCC’s list of market participant identifiers enables the institution to directly benefit from centralized clearing and settlement services with equal status to traditional financial institutions. NSCC is a subsidiary of DTCC that provides post-transaction central settlement, risk management and clearing services for billions of dollars of securities transactions worldwide. The addition of Hidden Road’s name to the NSCC index as of March 2026 is considered an indicator of the trend of institutional crypto players to be at the center of the financial infrastructure.
Ripple announced its decision to purchase Hidden Road in April 2025. While the acquisition process was completed in October 2025, the trademark was renewed as Ripple Prime. With this move, Ripple became the first company to have a global multi-asset prime brokerage entity as a crypto company.
David Schwartz, known as Ripple’s infrastructure manager, stated that the reason why Hidden Road was included in the NSCC under its former name was because the process was started before the regulatory approval processes were completed.
Potential Impacts and Strategic Comments on XRP Ledger
Following the acquisition, Ripple announced that Hidden Road would move its post-transaction operations to its own blockchain infrastructure, the XRP Ledger. Thanks to this transition, it was aimed to both simplify operations and reduce costs. XRPL has the potential to strengthen its claim as the financial infrastructure of choice for institutional DeFi applications in traditional financial markets.
Following the development, the XRP community and industry observers consider that Ripple Prime strengthens its role as a bridge between traditional finance and decentralized finance ecosystems. In particular, in the statement made by Related BankXRP, it was pointed out that transaction volumes can be transferred to XRP Ledger thanks to this bridge function of Ripple Prime.
BankXRP pointed out that “it seems likely that post-trade volume will move to XRPL thanks to the role of Ripple Prime.”
NSCC membership does not mean having to provide direct transaction flow to XRP Ledger. However, it is considered a remarkable step for a corporate level player to have this opportunity in terms of regulatory and operational aspects.
In the medium term, it is anticipated that underlying usage on the network may increase if Ripple Prime moves more post-transaction activity to the XRP Ledger. In this process, the potential of the XRP token to be used for transaction fee and liquidity guidance purposes comes to the fore. Instead of just short-term market movement, XRPL’s technical capacity and visibility in the financial sector will be supported by strengthening the institutional usage base.
However, it is emphasized that in the current situation, NSCC registrations do not automatically imply process and volume transfer, but only that Ripple Prime meets regulatory requirements and is ready for possible new flows.
