Ripple's aggressive acquisition strategy throughout 2025, totaling approximately $2.45 billion in the last seven months of the year, is being framed by Digital Ascension Group CEO Jake Claver as a master plan to construct a vertically integrated financial infrastructure platform, positioning XRP and Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD at the settlement layer. Claver, in a detailed analysis, draws a direct analogy to Amazon's path to dominance, arguing that Ripple is building the underlying infrastructure rather than just selling products.
The core of Claver's argument is that Ripple's 2025 deals represent the "pillars for a master plan" to create an end-to-end institutional product suite, branded "Ripple 1." He contends that this vertical integration—owning custody, clearing, treasury management, payment rails, and stablecoin infrastructure—creates structural advantages like lower marginal costs, faster iteration, and high switching costs for integrated institutions. This approach, he claims, is rare in financial services and could lead to "winner take all dynamics" due to powerful network effects.
Claver mapped Ripple's major 2025 acquisitions to specific infrastructure layers:
1. Ripple Prime (formerly Hidden Road): Acquired for $1.25 billion in April 2025, this prime brokerage serves as the institutional "plumbing." It served over 300 institutional clients and cleared more than $3 trillion in 2024, with business reportedly growing 3x since the acquisition. A key integration is its planned use of RLUSD as collateral across its products, creating organic demand for Ripple's stablecoin.
2. Rail: Acquired for roughly $200 million in August 2025, this stablecoin payments platform operates 24/7 and was forecast to process over 10% of a $36 billion global B2B stablecoin payments market in 2025.
3. GTreasury: Acquired for $1 billion (announced October, closed December 2025). This treasury management software processes $12.5 trillion in annual payment volume, providing Ripple with strategic distribution access to corporate CFOs and treasurers.
4. Palisade: Announced in November 2025 with undisclosed terms, this "hot wallet" layer provides wallet-as-a-service infrastructure for high-velocity transactions.
At the time of reporting, XRP was trading at $2.10. The overarching vision positions XRP and RLUSD as the foundational settlement assets moving across this entire integrated stack, aiming to capture institutional adoption by reducing friction and cost in global financial workflows.
