Brevan Howard taps Ripple Prime for crypto and traditional markets

Brevan Howard will run prime brokerage, clearing and financing for its funds through Ripple Prime, the two firms said on October 6. The deal moves a hedge fund that manages about $35 billion onto trading infrastructure built by the company behind XRP.

In a press release, Ripple set out the expanded deal. Ripple Prime will cover both digital assets and traditional markets for Brevan Howard-managed funds, the statement said. Neither firm put a number on what the arrangement is worth.

What Brevan Howard gets

A prime broker sits behind the scenes of large trading firms. It lends them cash, settles their trades and holds their assets in one account. Ripple Prime says it does this across digital assets, foreign exchange, listed derivatives, swaps and fixed income. Brevan Howard will now route that work through a single platform instead of stitching together separate desks.

For a fund, fewer counterparties means fewer places where something can break. It also frees up cash and collateral that would otherwise sit trapped at separate brokers. Fewer moving parts.

The firm on the other side is not small. Brevan Howard manages roughly $35 billion and runs about 1,000 staff across nine offices. Its clients include sovereign wealth funds, pension plans, foundations and endowments, the kind of money that moves slowly and checks its counterparties hard.

Noel Kimmel, president of Ripple Prime, said in the release that "there are few firms equipped to provide the next generation of prime services that sophisticated investors expect." Alan McGroarty, group chief operating officer at Brevan Howard, said Ripple "has built a differentiated platform that we expect will provide our investment teams with increased operational ease."

How Ripple and Brevan Howard are connected

This is no cold sign-up. Brevan Howard joined Ripple's $500 million strategic funding round in 2025, a round that valued Ripple at $40 billion, according to Cointelegraph. So an existing investor is now also a paying customer. That is worth holding in mind before reading the deal as a neutral vote of confidence from Wall Street.

Ripple Prime is the renamed version of Hidden Road, a prime broker Ripple bought for about $1.25 billion in 2025, Cointelegraph reported. Ripple has funded it steadily since. In August the unit raised $275 million through a sale of senior notes to pay for its push into clearing and financing. Ripple calls it the fastest-growing non-bank prime broker, a label it has not backed with audited client or volume figures.

In September the firm widened what it sells with a Delta One desk, which lets clients trade total return swaps tied to US-listed stocks, indices and digital assets through one counterparty, according to FinTech Global. Ripple Prime pitches a "conflict-free" setup: because it only clears and finances trades, and does not trade for its own book, it says it will not compete with the funds it serves. It claims more than $1 billion in regulatory net capital behind that promise.

Why funds want one desk for both markets

Crypto and traditional finance keep moving closer together. Funds that once traded only stocks and bonds now also hold tokens, and they want one counterparty for both. A single desk can cut the cost of shifting collateral and lower the number of firms a fund has to trust.

Ripple, best known for the XRP token, has spent the past two years turning itself into a plumbing provider for institutions. The same pull is drawing exchanges toward tokenized US stocks. Bank-owned brokers inside the largest Wall Street firms have long controlled this business, so a crypto-native challenger landing a $35 billion macro fund is a sign the pitch is working.

Timing helps the sell. Spot crypto ETFs, tokenized money-market funds and onchain versions of stocks have pulled traditional firms deeper into digital assets in 2026. A fund that holds a Bitcoin ETF, a tokenized Treasury fund and a basket of altcoins has to clear and fund those trades in very different places. Ripple Prime is selling the idea of doing all of it under one roof.

What to watch

The signal to watch is whether unaffiliated funds sign up next. One investor-turned-client does not make a trend. Watch too for hard numbers. Ripple has not said how much business will actually move onto Ripple Prime, what it charges, or how large its book already is. No deal value was given. If bank-owned brokers start matching the multi-asset pitch, the price of these services could drop, which would say more about real demand than any press release.