Ripple Prime has launched a Delta One business for institutional clients, adding total return swaps tied to U.S.-listed equities, indexes, and digital assets to its offerings. The service is now live for hedge funds, asset managers, and other financial institutions that use the company's multi-asset brokerage platform.

Under the new service, clients work with a single counterparty and can cross-margin their positions across supported asset classes.

Ripple announced the launch on August 27, 2026, in a post on X:

Introducing Ripple Prime’s Delta One business – bringing Total Return Swaps across US-listed equities, indices and digital assets to clients, tailored to their investment horizons, risk mandates and reporting requirements. Single counterparty. Cross-margined. Structurally…

— Ripple (@Ripple) August 27, 2026 (X post)

What Delta One Offers

According to the platform, the setup runs around the clock, allowing institutions to manage collateral and market exposure across both traditional and digital assets through one relationship.

Total return swaps provide exposure to an asset without direct ownership. Payments usually reflect the return of the referenced asset together with the financing terms agreed by both parties. The label "Delta One" comes from derivatives terminology: delta measures how closely an instrument's value tracks its underlying asset, and these products are designed to move essentially one-for-one with it. Equity total return swaps have long been a mainstay of bank prime brokerage, where hedge funds use them to run leveraged or short positions in stocks or to consolidate financing with a single dealer.

Ripple Prime President Noel Kimmel said the launch extends the platform the company has already built. With Delta One, U.S. equity derivatives are incorporated within an existing business that deals in foreign exchange, fixed income, digital assets, and derivatives.

Trades can be structured based on a range of investment horizons, reporting requirements, and risk parameters. The company manages the swap relationship, while the client gains the economics of the reference asset.

Ripple says the brokerage operates with more than $1 billion in regulatory net capital and offers clearing, financing, and prime brokerage solutions to institutional clients. That balance sheet is relevant on the dealer side of such trades: the provider of a total return swap typically hedges the exposure and finances that hedge on its own books, which makes a Delta One book capital-intensive to run.

A Year of Institutional Expansion

The new product is one of several introductions the firm has made in 2026. In May, Ripple Prime joined forces with EDX Markets, a collaboration that allowed clients to access EDX spot liquidity and EDXM International perpetual futures.

Earlier, in February, the company also offered access to Hyperliquid. Clients were able to trade on the decentralized derivatives platform via cross-margining with other assets. Among the exposures available were digital assets, foreign exchange, fixed income, OTC swaps, and cleared derivatives, and customers maintained a single counterparty relationship while trading on Hyperliquid.

The Delta One offering builds on this approach by adding exposure to U.S.-listed stocks and indexes. The sequence — a regulated digital-asset exchange, a decentralized derivatives protocol, and now U.S. equity derivatives — tracks the broader convergence under way between traditional and crypto market infrastructure.

In November 2025, Ripple Prime expanded its digital asset offerings in the United States, providing spot prime brokerage services to institutional clients after Ripple acquired Hidden Road.

From Hidden Road to Ripple Prime

Ripple completed its $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road in October 2025 and later renamed the institutional broker Ripple Prime. Hidden Road worked in both traditional and digital spaces, with solutions spanning clearing, financing, foreign exchange, fixed income, derivatives, and cryptocurrency products.

Ripple has invested further in the brokerage's growth. In May, Ripple Prime raised a $200 million debt financing facility through funds managed by Neuberger Specialty Finance, aimed at supporting financing in light of growing institutional borrowing needs.

Ripple Prime then closed the placement of $275 million in senior unsecured notes on Aug. 18, having increased the offering due to institutional interest. The notes received a BBB investment-grade rating from KBRA, and Piper Sandler served as a lead placement agent. The proceeds are reserved for working capital and general corporate uses, as well as for technology and staffing within the regulated broker.

According to Ripple, Ripple Prime currently clears more than $3 trillion annually and serves more than 300 institutional clients working across multiple asset classes.

Delta One brings total return swaps on U.S. equities, indexes, and digital assets to that platform, with cross-margining available for supported positions on the same brokerage account.

Source: The Block