Ripple has acquired crypto-friendly prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, marking one of the largest deals in the crypto industry's history.  The blockchain technology firm is aiming to use Hidden Road's platform to serve a wide range of institutional clients on a bigger scale, according to a company statement released on Tuesday.  “We are at an inflection point for the next phase of digital asset adoption – the US market is effectively open for the first time due to the regulatory overhang of the former SEC coming to an end, and the market is maturing to address the needs of traditional finance,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said Tuesday in a statement.  Ripple's latest acquisition comes amid financial institutions’ growing interest in digital asset-backed products and services, driven by U.S. regulators’ reduced oversight of the crypto industry.  In a recent EY-Parthenon poll of 352 institutional investors, 86% or respondents reported holding digital assets or planning to make crypto allocations in 2025. Meanwhile, investors with more than $100 million assets under management invested $27.4 billion in Bitcoin ETFs, up 114% from the amount they held in the previous quarter, CoinShares data shows.  Founded in 2018, Hidden Road offers myriad financial services that target institutional clients, including securities lending, cash management, custodial and settlement services and transaction financing. The firm clears more than $3 trillion per year across markets and has over 300 institutional clients, according to its own data.  Ripple is also integrating its stablecoin Ripple USD into Hidden Road, using the token as collateral across the prime brokerage's products. The integration may give RLUSD a competitive edge in a crowded market for dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies.   The business move also comes as merger and acquisition activity heated up across the crypto industry prior to the implementation of trade tariffs by the Trump Administration that have cast doubts about the global economy.  Last month, Kraken announced its plans to acquire futures trading platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion in what would be the largest deals in crypto history.  Sixty-two crypto merger and acquisition transactions occurred during the first three months of this year, up from 5% from the 59 deals reported in the fourth quarter of last year and 87% from the 33 deals logged in the third quarter of 2024, according to data from advisory firm Architect Partners. Edited by James Rubin