Ripple Prime Debut; Western Union Goes Solana
CEO of Ripple Brad Garlinghouse
Ripple completed its acquisition of Hidden Road on 24 October 2025, rebranding the business as Ripple Prime—a global multi-asset prime broker aimed at institutional clients.
The deal makes Ripple the first crypto company to own and operate prime-broker infrastructure, strengthening its push to bring digital assets to banks and financial institutions at scale. Ripple’s CEO highlighted a string of strategic acquisitions in recent years and reiterated that XRP remains central to the company’s Internet of Value strategy.
Days later, on 28 October 2025, Solana announced Western Union will build exclusively on its network, signalling traditional finance’s growing embrace of blockchain rails.
Together these moves show institutions shifting from experimentation to production and adopting different chains to solve distinct needs: institutional settlement and custody Ripple Prime, high-throughput payments for Solana.
The landscape is fragmented but accelerating, and the lesson for investors is to focus on real utility, regulatory clarity, interoperability as adoption widens.