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Recently, Ripple made a big stride toward integrating with Wall Street’s internal operations.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced on March 2 that Hidden Road Partners CIV US LLC has been added to the Market Participant. The brokerage division, now known as Ripple Prime, was listed in a prominent directory maintained by one of the largest financial utilities in the United States.
XRP holders see this as a clear sign that Ripple is entering the conventional finance sector. All of this is the outcome of Ripple’s acquisition of Hidden Road, a leading brokerage firm that oversees global trading in a range of asset classes.
Ripple’s Hidden Road officially goes live on the NSCC directorySource: @BankXRP
After announcing its plan to buy the company in April 2025, Ripple officially completed the $1.25 billion acquisition in October.
After the purchase, Ripple rebranded it as Ripple Prime. Ripple became the first digital asset business to own and operate a full-fledged, multi-asset global prime broker, which stands out as one of the largest in the crypto industry.
David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO Emeritus, commented on the development over on X, describing it as “important.” He noted that the DTCC listing still uses the previous Hidden Road name, most likely because some regulatory permissions were still pending and preparations for this step began well before the acquisition was finalized.
Schwartz emphasized the significance of incorporating the XRP Ledger into the routine processes that big organizations rely on.
The NSCC, which falls under the DTCC umbrella, handles centralized clearing, settlement, risk management, and counterparty services for broker-to-broker trades. It processes the vast majority of securities transactions in the United States.
Landing a spot in its directory means a firm gains real standing in the post-trade infrastructure that banks and brokerages rely on, networks that handle trillions of dollars in trading activity annually.
Plans to move Hidden Road’s post-trade processes onto the XRP Ledger were previously disclosed by Ripple. At the time of the deal’s closing, Hidden Road was managing over 300 institutional clients’ yearly transaction volume of about $3 trillion.
The idea of transferring conventional settlement procedures to blockchain technology seems much more feasible now that Ripple Prime is formally connected to NSCC channels.
Ripple drives faster settlement and growing ledger activity
A big draw here is the potential for much quicker settlement times. Conventional securities trades typically settle on a T+2 basis, leaving room for risks if things get delayed. In contrast, the XRP Ledger wraps up transactions in seconds at a low cost.
As Schwartz has said before, if post-trade flows start moving on-chain, the XRPL could handle settlement, collateral management, and liquidity for big deals.
Activity on the ledger itself is picking up as well. Société Générale recently launched a euro-backed stablecoin on the XRP Ledger. There’s also talk of upcoming features like options trading that could appeal to hedge funds and asset managers.
What happens next?
However, things aren’t always easy. Wietse Wind, an XRPL developer, has issued a warning about some quite sophisticated fraud that is circulating, such as phony NFT dumps and impostors posing as support teams.
Everyone is constantly reminded by the team that their seed phrase will never be requested by a legitimate Ripple or XRPL representative. Remain alert.
As of March 3, 2026, XRP trades around $1.35 amid modest short-term gains but remains range-bound following recent market dips.
Whether Ripple Prime’s actual use of the ledger will be the real indicator of this development.
In the short term, XRP’s price will probably continue to respond to the general market mood, but if institutional trades start moving through the network, genuine, long-term demand might surface.
To be clear, though, this NSCC directory listing doesn’t mean the NSCC is suddenly using the XRP Ledger itself. It means Ripple Prime now has the setup to potentially direct activity toward the ledger in the future. The coming months will show if Ripple can convert that positioning into concrete results.
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