Evernorth has cleared a major regulatory hurdle after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved its registration, leaving the Ripple-backed XRP treasury company one shareholder vote away from a potential Nasdaq listing under the symbol XRPN.
The San Francisco-based firm was created to establish a publicly traded company with XRP as its core treasury asset. Following the SEC’s approval, the company now needs shareholder backing to complete the final stage of its planned market debut.
The listing is being pursued through a merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II, a special-purpose acquisition company that raised investor capital to acquire a private business and take it public through a merger instead of a conventional IPO.
Armada shareholders are expected to vote on the transaction on Sept. 30. If approved, the merged company would begin trading under the XRPN ticker. Evernorth expects the transaction to close sometime in late September or October, according to information provided to CoinDesk.
Evernorth counts several prominent crypto investors among its backers. Ripple is one of the investors, alongside Arrington Capital, Japan’s SBI Group, Pantera Capital, Kraken and GSR.
The company was founded and is led by Asheesh Birla, who previously spent more than a decade at Ripple and ran its payments business before leaving the company.
Evernorth Takes a Different Approach to Crypto Treasuries
Most publicly traded digital-asset treasury companies have followed a simple strategy: accumulate a specific cryptocurrency and hold it on their balance sheet. Strategy established the model by building a large Bitcoin reserve.
Evernorth plans to take a more active approach with XRP. Rather than simply accumulating and holding the token, the company says it will invest in XRP-related infrastructure and manage its treasury with the aim of increasing the amount of XRP backing each share over time.
The company has not yet explained exactly how it intends to increase the XRP-per-share figure.
That strategy also highlights a broader challenge facing crypto treasury companies. Their shares can trade at either a premium or discount to the market value of their digital-asset reserves. Several Bitcoin-focused treasury firms have recently traded below the value of their holdings, reducing their ability to raise fresh capital by issuing additional shares.
The development comes as XRP maintains strong momentum. The token was trading around $1.41 on Thursday, up more than 27% over the previous week.
