Ripple's connection to DTCC may be much greater than XRP holders realize

Ripple's presence in traditional financial infrastructure may far exceed XRP holders 'expectations

Ripple's growing presence in traditional financial infrastructure is attracting widespread attention as analyst Rob Cunningham paints the scenario that Ripple's expanding institutional business may eventually be connected to a small fraction of the huge transaction flow flowing through the Depositary Trusts and Clearing Corporation (DTCC). Cunningham believes the scope of this opportunity goes far beyond XRP itself. In his view, Ripple has built an institutional-level technology stack covering prime brokers, custody, stablecoin settlement, blockchain infrastructure, payments and treasury management. If these businesses can become increasingly closely connected to institutions operating through traditional market infrastructure, then the scale of even a small fraction of surrounding financial activity will become significant.

Substantive connections behind the discussions

The current discussions are not groundless. A DTCC announcement in June revealed that Hidden Road Partners CIV US LLC, part of Ripple Prime, was added to the list with the identification code RIPL and the first transaction date of June 26. However, the data circulating around this story needs to be interpreted with caution. There are currently no announcements indicating that DTCC will route tens or hundreds of trillions of funds through Ripple, XRP or XRPL. Cunningham proposes a potential opportunity model: what would happen if Ripple could connect more of its services to institutions participating in these huge markets.

Ripple Prime gives Ripple direct access to traditional markets

The basis for this argument is Ripple's acquisition of Hidden Road. Ripple completed the acquisition in October 2025 and renamed the business Ripple Prime, creating a multi-asset institutional prime broker operating system covering digital assets, foreign exchange, derivatives, swaps and fixed income. Ripple said Prime currently liquidates more than $3 trillion annually in various markets and serves more than 300 institutional customers.

This is critical because Ripple no longer touches the institutional finance arena just as a blockchain payments company. It now has infrastructure that already operates within regular financial markets. DTCC's announcement adds another piece to the story: Hidden Road Partners CIV US LLC appears in the NSCC catalog update, using RIPL identifiers to connect a regulated Ripple-owned brokerage entity to DTCC's clearing infrastructure. This is significantly different from claiming that DTCC adopted Ripple technology, but it provides context for why Cunningham believes this opportunity deserves attention.

DTCC + Ripple = Important Note

Over the next 24 months, DTCC may process between US$11 and US$14 trillion, while Ripple has the opportunity to transfer its prime broker, custodian, stablecoin, treasury, Payment and blockchain services are directly connected to institutions participating in these markets...

DTCC processes approximately US$4 trillion annually

The scale of DTCC is beyond words. DTCC itself said in May that it settles about US$4 trillion a year, while discussing the scalability and risk management requirements involved in introducing tokenization into institutional markets. Based on this existing scale, Cunningham modeled what might happen over the next two years. He estimates that over the next 24 months, DTCC will process approximately US$11 trillion to US$14 trillion, with the upper limit depending on increased turnover rates and higher utilization of existing assets.

More importantly, he did not advocate that Ripple would handle all of this money. His core argument is that Ripple has the opportunity to serve agencies that touch this part of the activity. This is an important difference for XRP holders: The hundreds of billions of dollars describe the size of the broader financial infrastructure, not the expected XRP transaction volume.

Cunningham sees seven parts of Ripple's institutional strategy

Cunningham's core argument revolves around seven parts of Ripple's business: Ripple Prime, Ripple Custody, RLUSD, XRP, XRPL, Ripple Payments, and Ripple Treasury. He sees these businesses as components of an integrated financial infrastructure rather than looking at them in isolation. In theory, an institution may need to leverage and finance through Ripple Prime, manage assets through digital asset custody infrastructure, use RLUSD as stablecoin liquidity, use XRP as bridging liquidity when appropriate, use XRPL to perform certain blockchain functions, conduct international value transfers through Ripple Payments, and manage corporate liquidity through treasury infrastructure.

This creates a closed business loop that Cunningham describes from issuance and tokenization to custody, financing, trading, collateral, conversion, settlement and reconciliation. Part of this integration is already visible. Ripple said after completing the Hidden Road acquisition that RLUSD has been used as collateral for several prime brokerage products. It also noted that certain derivatives customers choose to hold balances in RLUSD. Ripple previously announced that Hidden Road will migrate post-transaction activities to XRPL as part of the integration. These are more specific than simply assuming that every Ripple product will automatically benefit from DTCC activities.

Why Cunningham thinks AI will make this opportunity bigger

Another interesting part of Cunningham's analysis involves artificial intelligence. He does not claim that AI will somehow create trillions of dollars in new assets, but believes that its greater impact may come from increasing the productivity of existing capital. AI systems can increasingly optimize collateral placement, margin requirements, liquidity sources, execution and settlement. Cunningham estimated the current turnover rate at about 41 times and simulated what would happen if the ratio rose to 50, 60 or 70 times.

According to his calculations, a turnover rate of 50 times corresponds to approximately US$57 trillion per year, 60 times corresponds to US$684 trillion, and 70 times corresponds to nearly US$8 trillion. These numbers are scenarios rather than DTCC predictions. But they illustrate a broader view: The future of financial infrastructure involves not only tokenizing more assets, but also allowing existing assets and collateral to flow and settle more efficiently. DTCC itself is promoting tokenization, which the organization has described as a transition from the experimental phase to the production phase, and has been developing tokenized collateral infrastructure for institutional markets.

Ripple doesn't have to account for a large proportion, the numbers are still huge

This is perhaps the most convincing part of Cunningham's argument. Ripple does not need to capture any near all share of DTCC activity to make addressable opportunities huge. Based on the $6 trillion to $8 trillion annual traffic scenarios modeled by Cunningham, even a tiny fraction of the percentage represents a huge underlying transaction value.

But XRP holders need to understand another difference: Connected financial flows are not equal to Ripple's revenue, nor are they equal to XRP's needs. If Ripple Prime liquidates a transaction, it doesn't mean XRP has to be involved. If an organization uses Ripple Custody, it does not necessarily have to involve XRP. Even if RLUSD becomes increasingly important within Ripple Prime, it doesn't mean that the same amount of dollars must be transferred through XRP. Cunningham himself limited XRP's role to bridging liquidity "in selected circumstances." This qualification is crucial.

What this means for XRP

For XRP holders, the strongest part of the story is not the eye-catching trillion-dollar numbers, but the infrastructure Ripple has assembled around institutional finance. Ripple Prime alone allows the company to liquidate more than $3 trillion in business annually. In addition to prime broker operations, Ripple also owns custody infrastructure, payment products, RLUSD, XRPL and XRP.

The question is whether Ripple can make these components increasingly interconnected. If institutional customers start using several parts of the stack at the same time, Ripple could create something more difficult for competitors to replicate than any single product. XRP may benefit when institutions specifically need neutral bridging liquidity, or when markets based on XRPL create additional demand for that asset. But this is still conditional. There is currently no basis for claiming that a fixed percentage of DTCC's trading volume will flow through XRP, nor is there any basis for claiming that DTCC's trillions of dollars in activity will directly translate into XRP prices.