Citadel Securities and Fortress led a half-billion dollar investment that values Ripple at $40bn. The bet is not on crypto hype. It’s on the plumbing for bank-grade stablecoin payments, custody and prime brokerage.
On Wednesday, November 5, 2025 (PT), Ripple said it raised $500 million at a $40 billion valuation, led by funds affiliated with Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities. Other participants include Brevan Howard, Marshall Wace, Pantera, and Galaxy. The deal follows a $1bn tender offer earlier this year at the same valuation.
Ripple’s message is straightforward: the money will deepen ties with financial institutions and scale an “operating system” for dollar-based settlement—RLUSD (its US-dollar stablecoin), custody, prime brokerage, and payments—aimed at banks, corporates and crypto-native firms. In the background sits a friendlier U.S. policy backdrop since the GENIUS Act, the new federal stablecoin law signed in July, which is already shaping institutional adoption.
Not a crypto exchange story — a stablecoin infrastructure play
Investors are buying into a B2B stack rather than a consumer trading app. Over the past year Ripple stitched together pieces of market infrastructure:
- Prime brokerage: in April, Ripple agreed to acquire Hidden Road for $1.25bn. Post-close, the unit has been rolling out under the Ripple Prime label, with RLUSD already used as collateral—a design choice that links trading liquidity to stablecoin demand.
- Treasury management: in October, Ripple announced a $1bn acquisition of GTreasury, putting its stablecoin and payments rails in front of Fortune 500 treasurers who already run cash, FX and risk on that platform.
- Stablecoin infrastructure: Ripple also acquired Rail to embed RLUSD into Ripple Payments as a default settlement option across cross-border corridors.
- Institutional custody: most recently, the firm bought Palisade to expand Ripple Custody for fintechs, corporates and crypto funds.
Ripple says it now holds 75 regulatory licenses for money movement and that Ripple Payments volumes have surpassed $95bn—both indicators of a business that looks and feels like a payment network, not a speculative token shop. Those are company figures, but they help explain why the cap table now includes market-structure natives like Citadel Securities.
The regulatory catalyst: the GENIUS Act flips the script
The GENIUS Act created the first U.S. federal framework for payment stablecoins. It sets issuance, redemption and reserve standards, clarifies what counts as a compliant dollar token, and outlines who can issue and under what supervision. This is the policy certainty treasurers wanted before embedding stablecoins in core workflows.
The timing matters. The raise landed less than four months after the law’s signing, and coincides with a spate of bank-grade pilots that treat stablecoins as always-on settlement cash, not a speculative asset class. That is why the round reads more like a payments-and-plumbing bet than a directional crypto trade.
Where RLUSD fits in a market still dominated by USDT and USDC
The stablecoin market is still led by USDT (≈$183bn market cap) and USDC (≈$75bn). Against that, RLUSD just crossed the $1bn mark less than a year after launch—small by comparison, but enough to matter once it’s hard-wired into prime brokerage, custody and corporate treasury software.
This is Ripple’s distribution thesis: put a compliant, institution-first stablecoin where volume already lives—FX/treasury systems, brokerage collateral pipes, cross-border payables—and let utility, not incentives, create demand. If GTreasury’s installed base begins to treat RLUSD as a default settlement and working-capital instrument, volumes can scale without retail promotions.
What the Wall Street names are really buying
Citadel Securities and Fortress aren’t paying for a token pump. They are paying for optionality on four things:
- Regulatory clarity enabling large institutions to use tokenized dollars in production, across time zones and weekends.
- An integrated stack—prime + custody + treasury + payments—where the same digital dollar can move from trading collateral to supplier payments without touching legacy cut-off times.
- Licenses and compliance muscle, which remain the true moat in B2B payments. (Ripple cites 75 licenses globally.)
- A pipeline to treasurers who care less about “decentralization” and more about speed, cost, controls, and auditability inside existing ERP/treasury workflows.
Key numbers to watch over the next 12 months
- RLUSD supply growth: Did RLUSD hold $1–3bn outstanding while preserving tight peg dynamics through stress? (CoinMarketCap/CoinGecko are the cleanest public gauges.)
- GTreasury activation: Are Fortune 500 treasurers running pilot payables/receivables in RLUSD across weekends and holidays—and reporting working-capital gains?
- Prime collateral usage: Does Ripple Prime (ex-Hidden Road) show rising RLUSD-as-collateral balances and settlement throughput that rivals traditional cash sweeps?
- Licensing footprint: Do we see new corridor licenses or passporting aligned with global rules (MiCA in the EU; UK’s systemic/non-systemic split; Canada’s incoming rules) to simplify cross-border coverage? (Context on UK/Canada is evolving; watch official consultations and rulemaking.)
The competitive map: why this could still fail
- Incumbent scale: USDT remains the liquidity default in many markets; even with policy tailwinds, prying liquidity from habit is slow.
- Policy fragmentation: GENIUS sets the U.S. baseline, but capital controls, tax and prudential rules vary widely. The operating complexity that hurts banks can also slow stablecoin providers.
- Bank partnerships: Banks may prefer tokenized deposits over third-party stablecoins to keep customers and data in-house. That could cap stablecoin share in corporate flows. (This is already visible in pilots across major banks; watch for disclosures as 2026 budgets finalize.)
- Execution risk in roll-ups: Ripple bought a lot, fast. Integrating prime, custody, TMS and payments into one coherent product takes time and disciplined risk management.
For founders and investors: the second-order opportunities
Compliance UX will become a moat. If Ripple proves that consent + controls + audit can be delivered with the same click-count as a card payment, expect a partner ecosystem around screening, travel-rule messaging, programmable controls and treasury analytics. The big upside is always-on working capital: instant settlement unlocks intraday liquidity harvesting, which treasurers value more than yield in a world of tight spreads.
Meanwhile, interoperability is the next fight. If RLUSD can route across ledgers (Ethereum ↔ XRP Ledger) without breaking compliance or accounting, it strengthens the story that tokenized dollars are format-agnostic cash rather than siloed assets. Today’s $1bn market cap is small; the question is whether distribution inside enterprise software turns that into durable share.
Bottom line
Ripple didn’t sell a vision of “number go up.” It sold rails: a stablecoin wired into prime brokerage, custody and corporate treasury, timed to an American policy shift that finally treats dollar tokens as part of the financial system. The investor list tells you what this is—a bet that the future of payments is settlement that never sleeps. The next year will show whether treasurers agree—and whether competitors let a new network effect form around RLUSD.
