- A Dragonfly investor says Ripple is evolving into a full-stack financial services firm.
- Recent actions include buying Hidden Road, agreeing to acquire Rail, launching RLUSD, and extending a credit line to Gemini.
Ripple’s expanding footprint across brokerage, payments, and stablecoins has prompted a Dragonfly investor known as Omar to argue that the company is becoming a full-stack financial services firm. His assessment followed fresh discussion on social media and coverage by crypto outlets amplifying the claim.
Ripple to acquire Rail for $200 million to expand stablecoin payments
On August 7, Ripple agreed to acquire Toronto-based stablecoin payments platform Rail for $200 million, a deal expected to close in the fourth quarter pending approvals.
The company says Rail’s virtual accounts and back-office tooling will integrate with Ripple’s stablecoin infrastructure, including its U.S. dollar-pegged RLUSD.
Press materials and trade publications present the purchase as a way to deepen enterprise stablecoin settlement across borders.
The Rail agreement comes four months after Ripple said it would buy multi-asset prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, adding a regulated brokerage arm with reported multi-trillion-dollar annual clearing volumes and more than 300 institutional clients.
The acquisition positions Ripple to intermediate trading, collateral, and financing flows that can link to its token and stablecoin products.
Hidden Road purchase and U.S. bank charter bid extend regulated footprint
The build-out has coincided with Ripple’s application for a U.S. national bank charter, a step that would allow direct access to Federal Reserve systems and potential custody of RLUSD reserves on balance sheet.
A national charter would place Ripple in a small cohort of crypto-native firms seeking federal supervision to scale payments and settlement services.
Ripple’s RLUSD launched in December 2024 and now circulates on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. Market-tracking sites show RLUSD’s capitalization in the hundreds of millions of dollars, with trading roughly at par with the U.S. dollar.
Company statements and independent coverage emphasize monthly attestations and a structure designed for institutional use cases.
On the technology side, Ripple and developer partners introduced the XRPL EVM Sidechain on mainnet in late June, enabling Ethereum-compatible smart contracts while maintaining a bridge to the XRP Ledger.
The move extends programmability for asset issuance and settlement workflows that can tie into brokerage and payments services. Ripple has also arranged a $75 million revolving credit line for Gemini, disclosed in the exchange’s recent IPO filing.
Seeing Ripple's credit agreement in the Gemini filing is a gentle reminder of the behemoth they've morphed into
Over the last ~1.5 years, they've bolted on a prime broker (Hidden Road), a PSP (Rail), an EVM chain (XRPL EVM), and a stablecoin (RLUSD)
Now we're watching as they… https://t.co/e8I2BakVSx pic.twitter.com/f8PzoWbmtD
— Omar (@TheOneandOmsy) August 23, 2025
The facility can scale up to $150 million and includes an option to denominate borrowings in RLUSD once the initial threshold is reached, underscoring how Ripple aims to use its balance sheet and stablecoin within capital markets plumbing.
Taken together, the brokerage purchase, stablecoin payments acquisition, bank-license pursuit, new EVM functionality, and the Gemini facility align with the “full-stack” characterization.
They indicate a strategy to control infrastructure layers from issuance and settlement to credit and trading, with XRP and RLUSD as native instruments within that stack.
At the time of press, XRP is trading at exactly $2.98 USD, showing a decline of $0.06, or −1.974%, from the previous close.
