Ripple has made a slew of acquisitions to manage key transaction rails and route them by means of XRP and its stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), drawing comparisons to Japanese funding agency SoftBank.
The $1.25-billion acquisition of Hidden Road on April 8 permits Ripple to use RLUSD as collateral within the agency’s prime brokerage merchandise. Hidden Road will even migrate its post-trade operations to the XRP Ledger, the blockchain that underpins cryptocurrency XRP (XRP) and a number of other of Ripple’s institutional providers.
Omni Network founder and CEO Austin King is aware of Ripple’s technique firsthand. He offered his startup, Strata Labs, to Ripple in 2019 and describes the strategy as a “SoftBank-type” acquisition technique.
Instead of in-house improvement like Google or Meta (previously Facebook), SoftBank constructed its empire by means of aggressive investments, joint ventures and acquisitions. Ripple appears to be following a comparable playbook, however not everybody’s satisfied the comparability holds.
The SoftBank mannequin in Ripple
Two offers put SoftBank on the worldwide map: an early investor in Yahoo and the legendary $20-million guess on Alibaba, which exploded to $60 billion when Alibaba went public in 2014. SoftBank recycled its returns into recent capital, exits and a sprawling ecosystem. That included the $20-billion transfer into US telecom through Sprint and semiconductors by means of its $31-billion acquisition of UK-based ARM.
“This vast breadth of protection allowed SoftBank to create synergies throughout their whole portfolio of firms,” King instructed Cointelegraph. “Ripple is performing a comparable technique targeted on monetary providers, however as an alternative of enterprise bets on Yahoo and Alibaba enabling this, it’s XRP.”
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Considering Ripple’s current acquisitions, each corporations purchase infrastructure as an alternative of constructing it from scratch and deal with their portfolios as ecosystems slightly than one-off investments.
Both firms depend on capital as leverage. SoftBank used its $100-billion Vision Fund to outbid opponents. Ripple additionally has a battle chest of XRP and money. As of March 31, Ripple had 4.56 billion XRP (round $11 billion at present costs) and one other 37.13 billion XRP ($89.8 billion) in escrow.
Acquisitions increase the footprint for XRP and RLUSD in conventional finance, turning them into embedded parts of custody, brokerage and fee flows. This creates what King describes as a token-fueled flywheel. Ripple makes use of its property to amass infrastructure, which in flip drives utilization again into these property.
“With a full-stack infrastructure, Ripple can embed XRP because the native bridge asset between networks, custodians and tokenized property. Meanwhile, RLUSD can present a regulated, USD-pegged unit of account that establishments need,” mentioned Sid Powell, co-founder and CEO of institutional blockchain lender Maple.
King’s analogy has its skeptics.
“SoftBank operates extra as a conglomerate or holding firm, taking broader funding positions throughout industries. On the opposite hand, Ripple is taking a extra targeted and product-related strategy with its current acquisitions tied to fee missions and core blockchain,” Powell mentioned.
Casper Johansen, co-founder of Spartan Group, instructed Cointelegraph the comparability appears “a bit stretched,” noting that SoftBank’s success got here from buying and turning round working companies, joint ventures, minority stakes and finally exiting some for giant positive aspects.
Ripple joins the crypto M&A arms race
Instead of spanning telecom, media and chips, Ripple is assembling a monetary infrastructure stack. It acquired custody corporations Metaco in 2023 and Standard Custody in 2024. The newest addition, prime dealer Hidden Road, brings 300 institutional shoppers clearing $3 trillion yearly.
“Where Metaco lays the muse — the vault for storing property — Hidden Road permits Ripple to leverage its large steadiness sheet to turbocharge Hidden Road’s enterprise, through which entry to capital — a lot of capital — is vital so as to continue to grow and competing,” Johansen mentioned.
The transfer echoes a broader M&A wave amongst US crypto corporations. Kraken just lately acquired NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion, whereas Coinbase has acquired Deribit for $2.9 billion.
These acquisitions observe a shift within the US regulatory local weather that’s clearing the runway for crypto corporations to scale. For years, firms like Ripple have been caught in limbo, going through lawsuits, enforcement actions and denied entry to primary banking providers below Gary Gensler’s Securities and Exchange Commission.
Related: Ripple celebrates SEC’s dropped appeal, but crypto rules still not set
While “debanking” remains a concern, trade leaders say momentum is altering. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse mentioned in a current media interview that the SEC is anticipated to take a “very constructive and optimistic” stance towards the trade.
Ripple itself spent years in a authorized battle with the SEC, which sued the corporate in December 2020. On May 8, Ripple and the SEC reached a settlement to formally finish the case, pending court docket approval.
Ripple’s subsequent strikes embody stablecoins
Garlinghouse mentioned Ripple intends to proceed exploring acquisitions.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if within the subsequent yr or two we noticed the acquisition of a large-scale point-of-sale firm to increase their territory from backend monetary providers to extra direct shopper funds,” King mentioned.
On April 30, Bloomberg reported that Ripple made a $4 billion-to-$5 billion bid to acquire Circle, which was rejected for being too low.
Ripple’s current strikes present it’s prepared to pursue high-stakes acquisitions, together with performs to soak up stablecoin rivals.
“The sensible integration of XRP stays restricted since establishments nonetheless hesitate to make use of unstable crypto property for core settlement,” mentioned Hadley Stern, chief industrial officer at Marinade. “RLUSD is extra promising, nevertheless it nonetheless faces main competitors from incumbents like USDC and PayPal USD.”
Stablecoin regulation within the US stays unresolved. The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins of 2025 Act — often known as the GENIUS Act — did not cross cloture within the Senate on May 8.
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