SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao has cheered Ripple’s latest acquisition move, with the fintech company recently announcing that its acquisition of Hidden Road, now Ripple Prime, was complete.
“It’s Prime Time: Ripple Closes Hidden Road Acquisition to Bring Prime Brokerage into the Digital Age,” the SBI founder tweeted alongside Ripple’s release on the milestone.
According to Ripple, its synergy with Hidden Road, a nonbank prime broker, makes the acquisition a logical next step to support institutional adoption of digital assets, including XRP and RLUSD.
XRP will be utilized alongside Ripple’s foundational digital asset infrastructure across payments, crypto custody and stablecoins to complement the services offered within Ripple Prime.
Ripple Prime is also expected to significantly enhance the utility and reach of Ripple USD, RLUSD, with the stablecoin already being used as collateral for a number of prime brokerage products.
Ripple announces new era for university blockchain research
Ripple is strengthening its commitment to academic innovation and blockchain research through new and renewed partnerships under its University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI).
The next chapter includes the formation of an advisory council of world-class researchers, a new collaboration with the University of San Francisco (USF) and over $1.5 million in renewed university partnerships funded entirely in Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin.
The launch of Ripple’s Advisory Council, which includes XRP Ledger’s co-creator David Schwartz and an inaugural group of distinguished cryptographers and computer scientists handpicked from across UBRI’s partner universities, formalizes a new structure for collaboration across its global academic network.