It is a hard day to focus on markets, but one piece of news deserves your attention outside of the Middle East.

DTCC, an entity with approximately $100 trillion in assets under custody and $4 quadrillion worth of annual transaction settlements, has just allowed Ripple’s prime broker to begin trading as a clearing broker through DTCC’s National Securities Clearing Corporation.

Do I have your attention now?

Market Context

This is huge news for the XRP Ledger. Hidden Road Partners CIV, which now operates as simply Ripple Prime, is now listed in DTCC’s NSCC directory in a clearing broker role, and its “first trade date” was added yesterday morning.

As XRPL co-creator David Schwartz noted today, massive post-trade volumes of clearing and settling transactions directly from a DTCC subsidiary are now able to flow onto the XRPL, which will drive demand for ledger space and the XRP token.

The news for XRP could not be more bullish amid an otherwise bearish period of geopolitical uncertainty.

What matters, at the end of the day, is whether there is sustained and growing demand for the XRP Ledger and its token – and no blockchain community in the world could hope for more demand than settling transactions for the largest clearing corporation in the world, DTCC.

News

Ripple Prime (Hidden Road Partners) gains NSCC first trade date (DTCC)
Bank of Japan pilots blockchain settlement for central bank deposits (Boj.or.jp)
Chinese banks freeze accounts over crypto memos (Protos)
Hong Kong + Shanghai sign digital trade finance pact (SCMP)
Senate housing bill reiterates CBDC ban (CoinDesk)
Riot Platforms $RIOT FY’25: Revenue $647M +71% y-o-y | BTC revenue $576M +79% y-o-y | Mining cost $49.6k / BTC | Net loss $663M | aEBITDA $12.9M (RiotPlatforms)
Core Scientific $CORZ Q4’25: Revenue $79M -15% y-o-y | Colo revenue $31.3M +36% y-o-y | GP 20.8M +333% y-o-y | NI $216M | aEBITDA loss $42M (CoreScientific)
Judge dismisses Uniswap token scam case (TheBlock)
Crypto hacks hit $265M in February (TheBlock)
Northern Trust $NTRS launching tokenized money market fund (Businesswire)
Tether taps Deloitte for USAT reserve report (Bloomberg)
Xbox co-founder expects console to be sunset (GamesBeat)
$115M in Polymarket bets unresolved on when Ayatollah Khamenei ousted (Bloomberg)

Nothing in this newsletter is financial or investment advice. We summarize news for informational and entertainment purposes only. We do not provide advisory services, guidance, or information regarding trading or investing. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

XRP Premium Analysis

If you are bearish on stablecoins like Ripple’s RLUSD, consider the fact that CRCL, the stock of the stablecoin issuer CRCL, has rallied 20% since the US launched military strikes against Iran over the weekend. Ripple isn’t publicly traded, but I sure would bid more for it now than I would last week.

See, during periods of geopolitical uncertainty, the world needs speed, reliability, and certainty of settlement. This is exactly where the XRP Ledger is fitting into the new geopolitical order – providing assurance and resilience in the midst of change.

This week’s addition of Ripple Prime to DTCC’s prestigious registry of NSCC-registered clearing brokers is a powerful example of the XRP community focusing on what matters and avoiding mistakes that I want to highlight in today’s premium analysis…

Crusaders Newsletter

BREAKING: Ripple’s prime broker completes…

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