Ripple Prime, Ripple’s institutional prime brokerage, now lets clients hold positions on stocks, indices, commodities and currencies at any hour through swaps tied to perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, Ripple announced on Oct. 15.
Market maker Virtu is one of the institutions already using the product. The swaps track more than 100 markets across stocks, stock indices, ETFs, metals, energy and currencies, and they trade and settle 24/7, weekends included.
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How the Swaps Work
Clients do not trade on Hyperliquid themselves. Ripple Prime enters each swap as principal, and the contract’s value follows a perpetual futures market that Trade.xyz lists on the decentralized derivatives exchange. Perpetual futures never expire, so a position stays open for as long as the trader keeps it funded.
Because the swaps sit inside a client’s Ripple Prime account, they can be cross-margined against the other asset classes the firm handles. Clients can also post Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin as collateral, though Ripple said availability depends on the jurisdiction. The company pitched the result as one counterparty and one consolidated view of margin and risk.
“RWA swaps are where traditional and digital markets meet,” said Michael Higgins, Ripple Prime’s international CEO, in the announcement. He added that institutions want exposure to equities, commodities and currencies “with the round-the-clock access and efficiencies of digital infrastructure.”
Scotte Moegling, Virtu’s head of business development for digital assets, said in the same release that Ripple Prime’s cross-margining helps the trading firm “expand our presence more efficiently as markets move toward round-the-clock access.”
One License for Now
For now, the product is available only through Ripple Prime’s CIV BVI license. More regions are planned, Ripple said, though it didn’t say which.
The launch builds on Ripple Prime’s earlier move onto the venue. In February, it added support for Hyperliquid so clients could margin onchain derivatives alongside their other holdings.
Trade.xyz’s lineup on Hyperliquid already includes an officially licensed S&P 500 perpetual, which debuted in March after S&P Dow Jones Indices granted the license.
Related Listen: The NYSE CEO Calls Hyperliquid ‘Bigger Than the Nasdaq’: Uneasy Money
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