- Ripple Prime has unveiled RWA perpetual swaps, enabling clients like Virtu to optimize capital growth across 100+ reference markets.
- The feature unlocks 24/7 trading and settlement of tokenized assets, bypassing banking hours and time zone limitations.
Ripple Prime, a multi-asset institutional prime brokerage platform operated by Ripple, has unlocked a new capability, enabling institutions to engage in real-world asset (RWA) swaps. The feature offers round-the-clock trading on more than a hundred markets.
Virtu, a leading global electronic market-making company, becomes a key participant in the new offering.
RWA Swaps on Ripple Prime
In a press release on Thursday, Ripple announced support for RWA swaps for institutional clients. The platform covers over 100 reference markets, including equities, indices, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), metals, energy, and foreign exchange (FX).
Virtu, alongside other institutional customers, is leveraging the new offering to trade tokenized assets 24/7. The same mechanism allows settlements beyond the confines of traditional markets and banking hours.
RWA swaps, traded through Ripple Prime as principal, reference perpetual futures contracts listed by Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid (HYPE), a high-performance decentralized exchange (DEX) for perpetual perps and spot trading. Ripple and Hyperliquid notably forged a partnership early this year to expand the DEX’s institutional reach.
Michael Higgins, International CEO of Ripple Prime, highlighted that RWA swaps bridge traditional and digital markets. It addresses the growing institutional demand for unbridled access in traditional markets through the efficiencies of digital infrastructure.
“Ripple Prime was built to operate in both worlds, with deep experience clearing trades and managing digital collateral and risk across venues, 24/7,” said Higgins. “With RWA swaps, we are enabling clients to execute increasingly sophisticated trading strategies and actively manage their portfolios in response to today’s dynamic global markets.”
Additionally, Ripple Prime expands Ripple USD’s (RLUSD) use case by letting RWA swap participants use it as collateral in transactions. It enables a single counterparty relationship, centralized risk management, and consolidated margin across clients’ portfolios.
RLUSD is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. It has a market cap of $2.36 billion, with its issuance split almost evenly between the XRP Ledger (XRP) and Ethereum (ETH).
Virtu Expands Liquidity Pool with Ripple Prime
Virtu expands its liquidity pool into Ripple Prime’s 24/7 cross-margining across asset classes. It helps the company expand its market presence efficiently.
Essentially, the solution addresses key pain points in traditional financial markets, particularly market fragmentation. It also bypasses rigid trading hours, which become more complicated when accessing markets across different time zones.
Meanwhile, having Ripple Prime as a single principal counterparty alleviates the operational burden, complexity, and risks of interacting directly with decentralized protocol layers or smart contracts. Furthermore, it simplifies treasury management as institutions no longer need to manage self-custody Web3 wallets or multiple accounts to trade different tokenized assets across various trading venues.
