Ripple Expands Into Leveraged ETF Financing
Through Ripple Prime, the company is moving into leveraged ETF financing, a market that has so far been dominated mostly by banks and securities firms.
Key Takeaways
- Ripple is expanding into leveraged ETF financing through Ripple Prime, a market that has long been dominated by banks and securities firms.
- The move follows the $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road, which gave Ripple a prime brokerage arm for settlement, financing, and trade processing.
- Ripple did not disclose revenue figures for this activity and did not say how much of it runs through XRP or the XRP Ledger.
Ripple is expanding its business into leveraged ETF financing, moving into a market that for years was mostly controlled by big banks and securities firms. Through Ripple Prime, the crypto company is providing financing to funds that want to amplify the daily moves of stocks and indexes, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Through Hidden Road to Wall Street
The move follows the $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road in October 2025. That gave Ripple control of a prime brokerage unit that already settles trades, finances positions, and processes transactions in stocks, bonds, currencies, and digital assets. In practice, that means Ripple has not only moved closer to traditional markets, but also taken on a role in a corner of Wall Street where a lot of institutional money moves every day.
In leveraged ETFs, that financing often happens through a total return swap. A fund that wants to track, for example, twice the daily move of Nvidia does not have to buy twice as many shares itself. The broker provides the exposure and usually hedges its own risk with stock positions or other trades, while charging a financing fee in return.
Costs and Competition
According to the Journal, the Tradr 2X Long SNDK Daily ETF, which aims for twice the daily move of Sandisk, pays Ripple the overnight bank funding rate plus four percentage points. At current rates, that works out to an annual financing cost of about 8%, separate from the ETF’s own management fee.
The leveraged ETF market has now become large. In the United States, there are 593 funds with more than $256 billion (€229 billion) in assets combined, including 426 funds that track individual stocks. That matters for European crypto readers because it shows how a crypto company can generate revenue through traditional market infrastructure from a segment that normally sits outside the crypto market. The recent growth in XRP ETF inflows also shows how quickly capital flows in this part of the market can shift.
What This Says About Ripple
Ripple launched its Delta One business in August and was already offering total return swaps on U.S. stocks, indexes, and digital assets at the time. The company said then that the unit had more than $1 billion (€0.9 billion) in regulatory net capital and that it had completed a $275 million (€246 million) senior debt offering to fund further growth.
At the same time, Ripple expanded its partnership with hedge fund manager Brevan Howard this week. Ripple Prime will provide brokerage, clearing, and financing services across multiple asset classes there. Ripple did not disclose how much revenue leveraged ETF financing brings in, nor how much of that activity runs through XRP or the XRP Ledger.
