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Crypto is becoming more entwined with TradFi as acquisitions and partnerships continue.
We noted the record amount of crypto M&A in Q1 — featuring Kraken’s unprecedented $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader.
In another 10-digit deal, Ripple said Tuesday it has agreed to buy Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. This gives the blockchain infrastructure provider access to a firm with clearing, prime brokerage and financing capabilities across FX, digital assets, derivatives, swaps and fixed income.
The theory is that aside from trading services, Hidden Road brings a level of credibility to digital assets that’s expected in legacy finance.
A prime broker clearing $3 trillion annually for more than 300 institutional customers, Hidden Road is the intermediary for hedge funds, market makers, OTC desks and quant traders. It is now set to migrate post-trade activity across XRP Ledger.
Architect Partners founder Eric Risley told me last week that “bridge transactions” — M&A between crypto and non-crypto companies — would remain a theme in 2025.
Michael Klena, a partner at the advisory firm, noted this morning that these so-called bridge deals signal healthy interest in the crypto ecosystem and “[move] blockchain forward to fully assimilate into the larger financial world.”
As for why Ripple did this, the potential for broader stablecoin adoption appears to be at the heart of it. An acquisition could be the only way for the crypto firm’s RLUSD stablecoin to compete with those of Tether and Circle, Klena explained.
“By having Hidden Road captive and using RLUSD as its primary settlement and payment option, it puts RLUSD into the crypto ecosystem with a key avenue,” he told me. “The upside is that RLUSD has a chance to become entrenched in TradFi usage.”
Klena noted that headline deals (like this, Kraken-NinjaTrader and last year’s Stripe-Bridge transaction) force participants to review their strategy and the inorganic M&A channel — whether as a buyer or seller.
“Activity begets activity, so we expect increasing deals over the next several quarters,” he added.
The deal’s timing is not surprising — coming a few weeks after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said on the Digital Asset Summit stage that the SEC planned to drop its appeal against Ripple.
The executive noted in a Tuesday statement that we sit at “an inflection point” for the next phase of crypto adoption now that such a regulatory overhang is gone.
As we see more examples of TradFi-crypto intersections, asset management giant BlackRock also extended its relationship with crypto bank Anchorage Digital.
This link-up comes “as demand for digital asset products increases, and as our footprint in the ecosystem grows,” BlackRock’s Robbie Mitchnick noted in a statement.
Anchorage started custodying BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, in December. The bank is now listed as a custodian of BlackRock’s spot bitcoin and ether ETFs, filings show.
The relationship lays the groundwork for “deeper collaboration” between the firms, Anchorage said. A spokesperson declined to comment on specifics for now, meaning we’ll just have to keep an eye out.
