Ripple Prime Launches Real-World Asset Futures for Institutional Clients
Ripple Prime, the institutional brokerage arm of Ripple, has officially introduced real-world asset (RWA) perpetual futures contracts to its institutional clients. These new offerings cover over 100 reference markets, including equities, indices, ETFs, and commodities, with liquidity provided through Trade.xyz on the Hyperliquid exchange. This move comes as open interest in crypto perpetual futures has declined, while RWA perpetual futures have surged from near zero to $9 billion in the past year, signaling Ripple’s ambition to bring this trend to Wall Street.
Expanding Prime Brokerage Services
Ripple’s prime brokerage business, Ripple Prime, is making significant strides. According to a Bloomberg report on October 15, Ripple Prime is now offering perpetual futures contracts linked to real-world assets to its institutional clients. These contracts, which have no expiration date, reference more than 100 markets, including stocks, indices, ETFs, and commodities. Trading will be facilitated through Trade.xyz, a decentralized derivatives exchange operating on Hyperliquid. This initiative builds upon Ripple Prime’s prior strategy of offering crypto perpetual futures to clients, effectively packaging the burgeoning trend of on-chain derivatives into prime brokerage services familiar to Wall Street institutions.
The arrangement supports cross-margining, allowing for shared collateral across positions. Michael Higgins, Ripple Prime’s CEO of International Business, stated that this feature will help institutions enhance capital efficiency and portfolio management. Clients can engage in basis trading, profiting from the spread between spot and futures prices, or use the contracts for directional trading, gaining exposure to traditional assets even when traditional markets are closed, such as on weekends. Higgins also noted that traditional hedge funds are nearing direct participation in tokenized RWA markets, with the key being the establishment of infrastructure that meets their counterparty and anti-money laundering requirements.
Strategic Integration and Market Expansion
Ripple Prime has been laying the groundwork for this expansion. In February, the firm integrated Hyperliquid into its platform, marking its first direct integration with a DeFi venue, according to The Block. This integration ensures that clients accessing Hyperliquid’s liquidity still have Ripple Prime as their sole counterparty. In late March, Higgins announced on X the expansion of integration to Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 market, a mechanism allowing third parties to deploy their own perpetual markets. This move opened up perpetual futures contracts for commodities like gold, silver, and crude oil. The latest expansion broadens this offering to over 100 RWA markets.
Ripple’s timing for this launch is strategic, reflecting a clear shift in capital flows. Bloomberg, citing data from crypto trading technology provider Talos, reported that over the past year, total open interest in perpetual futures across the top five trading platforms has fallen from approximately $81 billion to $67 billion. In contrast, open interest in RWA-linked contracts has surged from near zero to $9 billion, representing about 14% of the total. This indicates that the fervor for crypto-native leverage has not yet fully recovered, and trading infrastructure is extending to traditional assets like stocks and commodities.
Trade.xyz is at the forefront of this wave. According to The Block, Trade.xyz accounts for nearly 90% of open interest in Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 market. The platform has also secured authorization from S&P Dow Jones Indices to offer officially licensed S&P 500 perpetual futures, available only to eligible non-U.S. investors.
Ripple’s Acquisition and Growth
Ripple Prime was formerly known as prime broker Hidden Road. Ripple announced its acquisition of Hidden Road in April 2025 for $1.25 billion, making it the first crypto company to own and operate a global multi-asset prime broker. The acquisition encompassed clearing, prime brokerage, and financing services across foreign exchange, digital assets, derivatives, swaps, and fixed income. The transaction was completed in October of the same year, and the entity was rebranded as Ripple Prime. Ripple has stated that its business has grown threefold since the acquisition announcement. According to CoinDesk, Ripple Prime serves over 300 institutional clients and has cleared more than $3 trillion in transactions.
Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, is also a crucial component of this strategy. Ripple has officially stated that RLUSD is being used as collateral for several prime brokerage products, with some derivatives clients choosing to hold their balances in RLUSD. At the time of the acquisition announcement, Ripple also indicated that RLUSD would be the first stablecoin capable of efficient cross-margining between digital assets and traditional markets.
For the crypto industry, this development signifies a critical shift: on-chain RWA perpetual futures are transitioning from a niche product for retail and crypto-native traders to a sophisticated institutional tool within the regulated prime brokerage framework. By aggregating liquidity from Hyperliquid under a single counterparty and unified margin system, Ripple Prime is addressing the compliance challenges that hedge funds face when dealing directly with DeFi protocols. With RWA perpetual futures open interest already reaching $9 billion, the extent to which traditional institutional capital will follow suit will be a key focus for Hyperliquid and Ripple in the next phase.
