Evernorth, a company that holds XRP on its balance sheet, has cleared a shareholder vote and is due to land on Nasdaq next week. Trading under the ticker XRPN is set for October 8. It is the first big public treasury built specifically around XRP.
What exactly happened?
On September 30, shareholders of Armada Acquisition Corp. II approved a merger with Evernorth. Armada is a SPAC, a listed shell that raises investor money so it can buy a business later. The deal is expected to close on October 7, and Class A shares should start trading the next day.
The company filed its Form S-4 with the SEC in March, and it took effect in August. The vote was one of the last steps before the listing. Formal closing conditions remain, so the date is not guaranteed.
How does the SPAC route work?
A classic IPO takes months of preparation. A SPAC shortens the road: the shell already trades, and a private company merges into it and takes its place. This year CoinShares (Nasdaq, April, a $1.2 billion deal with Vine Hill Capital Investment Corp.) and Securitize (NYSE, July, a merger with Cantor Equity Partners II) went public that way.
For Evernorth, the money came from several places.
- Cash: about $300 million in gross proceeds.
- $225 million came from private placements of shares.
- $30 million came from convertible notes.
- Another $48 million or so arrived from the Armada II trust.
Some investors paid in XRP itself rather than dollars. That is why about 473 million tokens should sit on the balance sheet at closing.
Who is behind the company?
Investors include Ripple, Kraken, Pantera Capital, SBI Group, GSR and Arrington Capital. According to Evernorth, every committed funder is participating. The company first announced an XRP stash of about $685 million as part of a goal to raise $1 billion, and by Decrypt's count, contributions in tokens pushed the total past that mark.
"Going public will offer investors a regulated, transparent way to own XRP exposure and participate in the growth of the blockchain economy."
Asheesh Birla, founder and CEO of Evernorth, from the company statement on the vote results
The model is not new. Michael Saylor of Strategy invented it when he started buying Bitcoin with a public company's money. Evernorth copies the approach, but for XRP.
Why has the treasury market grown cautious?
Not every such deal makes it to the finish. In April, Ether Machine scrapped its merger with Dynamix, and with it a planned $1.5 billion fund for Ethereum. In July, Adam Back's Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company and Cantor Equity Partners I rewrote the original terms and postponed the vote with no new date.
The reason is a market that changed. Investors no longer want to pay a premium for tokens alone.
What should XRP holders expect?
The XRPN stock will give exposure to XRP through a brokerage account, with no wallet or keys. But it will follow the token's price, and XRP trades near $1.50 now and can swing hard in either direction. The company promises to grow XRP per share through yield strategies, ecosystem participation and capital markets activity.
The nearest dates are simple: closing on October 7, first trading day on October 8. The first sessions will show whether investors pay more or less for the stock than the tokens behind it are worth.
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