Ripple Hires London Metal Exchange Treasury Chief Joseph Thompson to Lead Its Tokenization Push

Ripple has hired Joseph Thompson, senior vice president and head of treasury at the London Metal Exchange, for its trading and markets team as the company deepens its push into institutional tokenization, according to an August 28 report. Thompson leaves the LME on August 31 after nearly a decade at the metals exchange.

A career built on treasury, clearing and collateral

Thompson’s background reads like a résumé written for exactly the business Ripple is trying to build. At the LME, which operates futures and options markets for industrial metals, he managed treasury operations and was previously identified as head of investment and liquidity and collateral risk management — responsibilities that touched liquidity, eligible collateral, and financial risk in clearing operations.

Before the LME, Thompson held liquidity management and funding roles within Deutsche Bank’s group treasury division, worked in liquidity risk at ICAP, and handled collateral and liquidity management risk at London Clearing House. He brings more than 15 years of financial-services experience and holds certification from the Association of Corporate Treasurers.

That combination — exchanges, clearinghouses, collateral, and institutional liquidity — maps closely onto the infrastructure Ripple has been assembling for digital-asset markets.

Ripple’s tokenization ambitions

Ripple has expanded well beyond its cross-border payments origins into custody, stablecoins, treasury technology, tokenized assets, and institutional trading. Its tokenization business supports the issuance and management of funds, bonds, securities, and other real-world assets on the XRP Ledger.

The company recently invested in ZILO and Licuido, two firms that added token issuance and collateral tooling to its stack. Ripple said the investments were aimed at building regulated transfer agency, trading, and collateral mobility into its capital-markets infrastructure.

Thompson’s experience at a major commodities exchange fits that direction. Notably, however, Ripple has not announced any commodity tokenization product connected to the appointment, nor has it said that Thompson will develop products tied to metals traded on the LME. The hire confirms a personnel addition to Ripple’s tokenization operations — not a partnership between Ripple and the exchange.

Ripple Prime and the institutional buildout

The appointment follows the launch of Ripple Prime’s Delta One business for institutional investors, which allows clients to execute total return swaps linked to US-listed equities, equity indices, and digital assets. The service gives hedge funds and asset managers access through a single counterparty, with the ability to cross-margin exposure across foreign exchange, derivatives, fixed income, equities, and digital assets.

Ripple Prime grew out of the company’s 1.25 billion USD acquisition of Hidden Road, which closed in October 2025. The brokerage now clears more than 3 trillion USD in annual trades for over 300 institutional clients, according to Ripple’s own figures, and has joined a DTCC working group focused on tokenized securities — though that participation does not place XRP inside the DTCC’s clearing system.

What the hire signals

Ripple’s exact title, start date, and reporting structure for Thompson were not disclosed, and the company has not published a timetable for projects under his remit. Neither Ripple nor the LME has announced who will replace Thompson as the exchange’s head of treasury.

Still, the signal is clear. Tokenized real-world assets have moved from white papers to production infrastructure, and the bottleneck is increasingly operational rather than technological: issuers need collateral management, liquidity pipelines, and clearing expertise that traditionally lived inside institutions like the LME, Deutsche Bank, and LCH.

Hiring operators who have run that machinery in traditional markets is how crypto firms are trying to close the credibility gap with institutions that remain cautious about digital-asset infrastructure. Ripple is competing with banks, exchanges, and other blockchain firms for the same scarce talent pool of market infrastructure veterans.

For XRP holders watching for a direct catalyst, the caveats matter. The appointment does not establish that any future tokenized asset will use XRP, and no new market launch has been confirmed. What it does show is that Ripple continues to staff its capital-markets division with executives who have spent careers inside the systems it wants to complement — and eventually compete with.

Thompson is expected to begin his work at Ripple after departing the LME on August 31. Further disclosures will be needed to establish which tokenization products, markets, and institutional clients fall under his responsibilities, but the direction of Ripple’s institutional buildout is no longer in question.