Ripple-Backed XRP Treasury Firm Nears Nasdaq Listing After Shareholder Vote

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved Evernorth’s registration statement, bringing the Ripple-backed XRP treasury company one shareholder vote closer to a Nasdaq listing under the ticker XRPN.

The San Francisco-based company was created to hold XRP on a public company balance sheet. Its registration clearance leaves shareholder approval as the final major step before the company can begin trading on Nasdaq.

Evernorth plans to become public through a merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that raised capital from investors to acquire a private business and bring it to public markets without a conventional initial public offering.

Armada shareholders are scheduled to vote on the transaction Sept. 30. If approved, the resulting company will trade under the symbol XRPN. Evernorth expects the transaction to be completed in late September or sometime in October, the company told CoinDesk.

Ripple, which maintains a close relationship with the XRP ecosystem and controls a substantial portion of the token’s supply, is among Evernorth’s investors. Other backers include Arrington Capital, Japan’s SBI Group, Pantera Capital, Kraken and GSR.

Evernorth founder and CEO Asheesh Birla previously spent more than 10 years at Ripple, where he led the company’s payments division before departing.

Crypto treasury companies typically focus on accumulating a single digital asset and holding it, following the strategy pioneered by Strategy with Bitcoin.

Evernorth plans to take a different approach. Rather than simply holding XRP, the company intends to invest in XRP-related infrastructure and actively manage its treasury with the goal of increasing the amount of XRP represented by each outstanding share. However, the company has not provided details on how it plans to achieve that objective.

The strategy also faces a challenge seen across the digital-asset treasury sector. These companies can trade above or below the market value of the cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets. Several Bitcoin treasury firms have recently traded below the value of their holdings, limiting their ability to raise additional capital by issuing new shares.

XRP was trading around $1.41 on Thursday, marking a gain of more than 27% over the previous seven days.