How Wall Street’s Ripple bet gives XRP a big institutional role
Major Wall Street firms invested in Ripple, signaling its shift toward becoming an institutional financial infrastructure provider using XRP.Summary
Ripple secured a $500 million strategic investment at a $40 billion valuation from traditional financial institutions like Citadel Securities, Fortress Investment Group, and Brevan Howard, signaling Wall Street's belief in Ripple as an asset-agnostic financial infrastructure provider rather than just a crypto company.
This perception is driven by Ripple's acquisitions, including prime broker Hidden Road (now Ripple Prime), custody provider Palisade, and GTreasury, creating a holistic product ecosystem mirroring traditional finance workflows (custody, treasury, settlement, trading, financing).
The institutional focus is reshaping the role of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and XRP. With the introduction of the NYDFS-regulated stablecoin RLUSD settling on XRPL, XRP is now viewed as a native liquidity and consensus mechanism securing the ledger, rather than just a speculative asset. Partnerships, such as one with Mastercard, WebBank, and Gemini exploring stablecoin settlement for card transactions, further validate XRPL's technical profile, tying XRP's long-term relevance to its utility within this growing regulated settlement infrastructure.
(Source：CryptoSlate)