Usman Salis
Ripple isn't waiting for the financial world to come to crypto - it's buying its way in. Over the past two years, the company has quietly assembled one of the most aggressive acquisition strategies in the digital asset space, spending around $2.7 billion to plant its flag inside the infrastructure that moves money for corporations, institutions, and prime brokers worldwide. The message from CEO Brad Garlinghouse is clear: the bridge between traditional finance and blockchain is being built right now, and Ripple intends to own it.
Ripple Spends $2.7B on Metaco, Hidden Road, and GTreasury to Enter Institutional Finance
Since 2023, Ripple has closed several landmark deals that collectively reshape its position in enterprise finance. The $250 million acquisition of custody specialist Metaco gave the firm a foothold in institutional digital asset management. The $1.25 billion purchase of prime broker Hidden Road added full-service brokerage infrastructure to its portfolio. And the $1 billion acquisition of GTreasury - now rebranded as Ripple Treasury - opens the door to one of the largest untapped markets in finance.
As Garlinghouse put it: We're bringing traditional finance and blockchain together - that's the whole point.
The GTreasury deal alone signals just how large the opportunity is. Before the acquisition, the platform processed roughly $13 trillion in payments annually - none of which touched cryptocurrencies or stablecoins. That gap between scale and crypto adoption is exactly what Ripple is targeting. Ripple Moves Into $120T Treasury Payments Market with GTreasury Acquisition covers how this deal hands Ripple access to a $120 trillion corporate treasury payments market, a space that legacy providers have dominated without any blockchain competition until now.
XRP Futures Launch at CME as Ripple's Institutional Push Gains Momentum
The Hidden Road acquisition deepens Ripple's institutional reach further, adding prime brokerage capabilities that few crypto-native firms can match. Alongside these deals, Ripple also picked up Rail, a stablecoin payments platform, reinforcing its position in global payments infrastructure. Regulatory clarity over the past year has made these moves easier to execute, giving the company room to deploy capital without the legal overhang that once dominated its headlines. CME Group Rolls Out XRP Futures as Ripple Boss Calls It a Gamechanger shows how the broader institutional momentum around XRP is building in parallel with Ripple's corporate expansion.
With the buying phase largely complete, Ripple is now focused on integration - connecting its acquired capabilities into a unified platform that serves both crypto-native clients and traditional corporate treasuries. The result is a company that no longer looks like a crypto startup pitching legacy banks, but a financial infrastructure provider operating on both sides of the divide. For XRP and the broader digital asset market, Ripple's expanding enterprise footprint is one of the clearest signals yet that institutional adoption of blockchain rails is moving from conversation to execution.
Usman Salis
