A recent discovery by XRP community members has shed new light on Hidden Road, the prime brokerage firm Ripple acquired in April.
Specifically, it revealed that Hidden Road joined the Government Securities Division (GSD) of the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC), part of the DTCC, as a member in March 2025, just weeks before Ripple officially announced the acquisition.
The membership grants Hidden Road access to a clearing system that processes over $11 trillion in daily U.S. Treasury trades. XRP community member Matthew called attention to this development in a tweet.
DTCC’s GSD Clears Over $11 Trillion Daily
According to a DTCC notice dated March 11, 2025, Hidden Road’s membership became effective on March 14, under participant number #9388.
This allows the firm to participate in netting (buy/sell), repo netting, and GCF Repo transactions, key components of how large-scale Treasury operations are cleared in the U.S.
DTCC notice for Hidden Road membership
GSD’s recent performance highlights the significance of this membership. Notably, it hit a record $9.2 trillion in daily volume on September 3, 2024, surpassing the previous high of $8.8 trillion in July.
More recently, FICC confirmed clearing over $11 trillion in U.S. Treasury trades as of April 9, 2025, a new all-time high.
The surge in activity comes in the wake of the SEC’s 2023 mandate requiring expanded central clearing for U.S. Treasury transactions. Before the rule’s finalization in December 2023, FICC’s average daily volumes hovered around $4.5 trillion. By the end of that year, they rose to $7.2 trillion, and in 2024, they breached $10.4 trillion on peak days.
Firms like Hidden Road are capitalizing on this trend. Ripple disclosed that Hidden Road clears over $3 trillion annually for more than 300 institutional clients. However, before the acquisition, settlement delays were a pain point.
XRP’s Place in Hidden Road’s Trillion-Dollar Market
Ripple aims to resolve this through integration with the XRP Ledger, which will handle post-trade operations. Specifically, XRPL will enable five-second settlements and greater transparency.
Expectedly, this has sparked renewed speculation in the XRP community. Some enthusiasts believe that if the system adopts XRP for settlement, even for $1.5 billion daily, the token’s price would jump to $30. However, Ripple’s latest blog post clarified that XRP will not be for settlement.
RLUSD Takes the Lead as Collateral Asset
Instead, Ripple confirmed that its stablecoin RLUSD will be collateral on Hidden Road’s platform. Since the XRP Ledger will be for infrastructure and post-trade processing, XRP’s place will be in transaction fees.
However, this revelation sparked debate within the XRP community. Some argue that RLUSD may be overtaking XRP as Ripple’s flagship asset in enterprise use cases.
