Ripple has just added another chapter to its meteoric rise. The blockchain payments company has raised $500 million, pushing its valuation to $40 billion, a level worthy of traditional finance giants. Leading the funding round are Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities, two heavyweights on Wall Street. Other major players like Galaxy Digital, Pantera Capital, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace also participated in this operation closed on Tuesday night.
Ripple announces a new record-breaking fundraising
This financing comes after a series of spectacular moves: a billion-dollar stock buyback offer and over $4 billion in acquisitions in two years. According to Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, this fundraising is “the icing on the cake of a mountain of good news“. The company has indeed just put an end to its legal battle with the SEC definitively after five years of struggle.
Ripple has seized this regained stability to expand its activities far beyond cross-border payments, its historical core. Now, the firm is making waves in the fields of digital asset custody, stablecoins, institutional brokerage, and treasury management.
A massive offensive towards institutional finance
The influx of fresh capital should allow Ripple to strengthen its ties with traditional finance. Its stablecoin RLUSD, pegged to the dollar and launched less than a year ago, has already surpassed the billion-dollar market cap. The token is designed for the most strategic uses: corporate treasury, collateral, or instant 24/7 settlements.
The integration of GTreasury, acquired for a billion dollars, has opened the doors of the corporate world to Ripple. This platform, which manages trillions of dollars in corporate cash, now connects its clients to Ripple’s on-chain ecosystem, a decisive step towards blockchain adoption by Fortune 500 companies.
Ripple continues to impress with the numbers
In terms of payments, Ripple Payments boasts over $95 billion in cumulative volume, driven by the joint use of the XRP token and the RLUSD stablecoin. On the other hand, Ripple Prime, the brokerage platform resulting from the acquisition of Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, has seen a tripling of daily transaction volume and a doubling of client collateral in a few months.
The company also claims to have bought back over 25% of its own shares in recent years to provide liquidity to its employees and early investors. As a result, institutional funds are now scrambling to get a piece of Ripple’s capital, still one of the few crypto giants to attract Wall Street while maintaining a blockchain DNA.
