Ripple has moved far beyond its payments company origins. In 2025, the firm executed a series of aggressive acquisitions totaling roughly $4 billion, assembling a full banking infrastructure stack that analysts now call "the banker's bank."
The $4 Billion Acquisition Stack
The buying spree started with $1.25 billion for Hidden Road, a prime brokerage clearing roughly $3 trillion annually, rebranded as Ripple Prime. Next came $200 million for Rail, adding stablecoin payment rails. Then $1 billion for GTreasury, cracking open the corporate treasury market. Finally, Palisade provided institutional custody and wallet technology. Together, these pieces give Ripple a complete infrastructure package for traditional banks that lack the time and expertise to build blockchain systems from scratch.
In December 2025, the OCC granted Ripple conditional approval for a national trust bank charter, giving the firm direct access to US banking rails without needing to buy a bank. CEO Brad Garlinghouse framed the strategy carefully: "Banks are our customers. If we want these technologies to have the biggest impact on the largest number of people, banks are the touch point." When asked directly if Ripple would acquire a bank, he replied: "They're our customers."
XRP ETF Deadline Looms
Separately, the SEC faces a February 26 deadline on T. Rowe Price's active crypto ETF, which lists XRP as a core eligible asset. T. Rowe Price manages $1.8 trillion in assets and stated in its filing: "We believe that blockchain technology and digital assets will play an important role in the future of the financial services industry."
US spot XRP ETFs already hold over $1 billion in net asset value, representing more than 1% of circulating supply. Since January, 42 new wallets holding over 1 million XRP each have appeared on-chain, signaling accumulation by large holders.
Supply Squeeze and a Key Risk
XRP is trading at $1.44 with a market cap of roughly $87 billion. Ripple's 2026 roadmap includes native lending and zero-knowledge proofs on the XRP Ledger. However, analysts flag a critical risk: enterprise adoption of Ripple's infrastructure "may not immediately translate into proportional demand for the XRP token itself, creating a lag in price discovery."