Ripple, one of the biggest names in the cryptocurrency sector, recently purchased prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, underscoring how decentralization and traditional finance are officially meshing.

Nic Puckrin, a crypto analyst and founder/CEO of The Coin Bureau, says the deal is indicative of this new trend and a positive for Ripple’s blockchain adoption and the price of XRP.

After all, the transaction — set to close by the third quarter of this year — will be mostly cash-based, with a portion paid in XRP tokens and Ripple stock.

Hidden Road, which handled $3 trillion in fund transfers in 2024, started in 2018 — a year when cryptocurrencies crashed worse than the dot-com bubble.

Today,…