Ripple Pulls Plug on Proposed Fortress Trust Acquisition Deal

Blockchain firm Ripple has canceled its plans of an outright acquisition of Fortress Trust, a development that marks a significant U-turn from the former’s previous intention to purchase the company roughly three weeks earlier.

However, Ripple plans to keep supporting Fortress while stating that it will continue to be an investor in Fortress Trust’s parent company.

• Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse took to X to announce the news, stating that the outcome was different from the original plan to buy Fortress Trust.

A few weeks ago, we signed a letter of intent to acquire Fortress Trust – we’ve since made the decision not to move forward with an outright acquisition, though Ripple will remain an investor in @Fortress_io.

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) September 28, 2023

• While Garlinghouse did not state the reason for the termination, the Ripple chief said his company “will remain an investor” in Fortress Blockchain Technologies, the parent company of Fortress Trust.
• As stated by Garlinghouse in the tweet:

“The Fortress team is incredibly talented and has built products solving real customer problems. While this outcome is different from what was originally planned, we’ll continue to support them and hope to work together in the future.”

• The relationship between Ripple and Fortress goes back to 2022, after the former participated in the latter’s seed funding, becoming a minority investor in the company.
• As previously reported by CryptoPotato, Ripple, on Sept. 8, announced that it had agreed to buy Fortress Trust shortly after purchasing crypto custody provider Metaco for $250 million.
• The proposed Fortress Trust acquisition would have expanded Ripple’s collection of regulatory licenses, as the former has a Nevada Trust license. A day before the acquisition plans, on Sept. 7, Fortress announced that one of its third-party vendors suffered a security breach that affected four clients.
• Ripple later stepped in to make the four affected customers whole as part of the acquisition deal, although neither Ripple nor Fortress revealed the loss from the incident and the amount repaid.