Ripple Prime Adds 24/7 Stock Swaps; HSBC Flags Thin Liquidity — SkimNews
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- Ripple Prime (formerly Hidden Road) now lets institutional clients trade swaps tied to more than 100 stock, commodity, and currency markets around the clock, using RLUSD stablecoin as collateral, per Ripple's Oct. 15 announcement.
- HSBC's Daragh Maher called the launch "evolutionary, not revolutionary" and warned thin liquidity will initially concentrate activity among market makers, prop traders, and hedge funds running basis trades rather than institutions seeking strategic hedges.
- Virtu Financial is already using Ripple Prime's service, according to Ripple's Oct. 15 announcement; the swaps track perpetual futures on Hyperliquid via Trade.xyz, letting funds take gold or stock exposure on weekends when conventional markets are closed.
- Weekend liquidity risk surfaced Saturday when nearly $52 million in leveraged chip-stock positions were forcibly liquidated in 10 minutes as selling spread from Binance to Hyperliquid while the underlying shares weren't trading.
- Ripple is already earning fees financing leveraged stock bets, expanding into a business long dominated by banks; the new swaps are offered through Ripple Prime's British Virgin Islands license with more jurisdictions planned.
Why it matters: The Saturday flash — $52 million in chip-stock leverage wiped out in 10 minutes while shares weren't trading — puts real teeth behind HSBC's caution, showing the platform's fragility before it has scale. Until order-book depth catches up, Ripple Prime's weekend market is likely to remain an arbitrage playground for prop shops and market makers rather than the institutional hedging venue Ripple is pitching.
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