Evernorth has hired Hugo Jeandesboz, formerly co-chief investment officer at Coinbase Asset Management, to run an XRP treasury that already holds 473 million tokens valued at about $672 million, positioning the company to become a publicly traded vehicle for exposure to XRP as its merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II closes.
Jeandesboz will oversee treasury allocation, liquidity management and active deployment of Evernorth’s XRP under founder and chief executive Asheesh Birla. The company’s stated aim is to increase XRP held per share through lending, liquidity provision and other yield-generating strategies, rather than leaving its token balance in cold storage.
That approach puts the performance of Evernorth’s future Nasdaq-listed shares partly in the hands of a treasury desk operating in crypto credit and liquidity markets. Shareholders would gain exposure not only to movements in XRP’s market price, but also to the returns—and risks—created by the company’s deployment of its holdings.
A large XRP position enters public markets
Evernorth reported at closing that it held 473 million XRP, alongside $300 million in cash before transaction expenses. At the quoted XRP valuation, the token position alone would place the company just outside the 20 largest publicly traded corporate cryptocurrency holdings by dollar value, according to Bitcoin Treasuries data.
The merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II, a special purpose acquisition company, was completed on Friday. The transaction is intended to take Evernorth public on Nasdaq, creating an equity instrument linked closely to the value of its XRP treasury.
The company described the transaction as bringing total funding above $1 billion when direct digital-asset contributions from private groups are included. The cash component includes $225 million from private placements and a $30 million loan note, according to the supplied deal details.
The gap between those figures reflects the structure of crypto-treasury transactions, where token contributions can represent a substantial share of the capital base. In Evernorth’s case, XRP is the central asset rather than a small diversification allocation on a corporate balance sheet.
XRP fell about 10% during the past week, according to the supplied market data, reducing the dollar value of Evernorth’s initial treasury ahead of the public-market debut. The decline underlines a basic constraint on the model: even successful lending or liquidity strategies may be outweighed by sharp moves in the underlying token’s price.
Jeandesboz takes charge of an active treasury model
Jeandesboz joins Evernorth after working on institutional investment strategies at Coinbase Asset Management. He also previously served as lead derivatives trader at Coinbase, experience that could be relevant for managing liquidity, hedging exposure and deploying a large token balance without relying solely on spot-market sales.
His mandate goes beyond safeguarding the XRP reserve. Evernorth plans to lend assets, provide liquidity and pursue other on-chain or market-based yield opportunities. Lending generally involves supplying tokens to borrowers in exchange for interest, while liquidity provision involves placing assets in trading pools to earn a share of fees or other incentives.
Those activities can generate returns, but they introduce risks absent from a passive holding strategy. Borrower defaults, smart-contract failures, changing liquidity conditions and counterparty concentration can all affect results. Any yield earned also needs to exceed the costs and potential losses associated with deploying the treasury.
Birla’s strategy marks a departure from the corporate crypto treasury approach built around holding a large asset reserve with minimal activity. Evernorth is instead seeking to make the treasury a source of operating returns. That could increase XRP per share if the strategies work as planned, though it also makes the company’s valuation harder to assess simply by multiplying its token balance by the spot XRP price.
The company’s disclosures on the size of deployed positions, counterparties, collateral terms and realized yield will therefore carry unusual weight after the listing. A public company using digital assets actively can see its asset value change through both market prices and treasury operations.
Armada shares showed heavy volatility before closing
Armada Acquisition Corp. II shares moved sharply in the run-up to the merger close. The stock traded near $10.68 roughly two weeks earlier, rose as high as $53 on Oct. 2, and finished Friday at $17.09. It later traded at $18.57 after hours, according to the supplied market figures.
Trading volume also accelerated ahead of the deal. More than 3.1 million shares changed hands on Friday, compared with an estimated normal daily average of about 551,000 shares.
The movement occurred alongside an estimated 80% redemption rate among holders of the SPAC’s earlier shares. Redemptions reduce the number of public shares remaining after a merger, potentially creating a smaller freely tradable float. When demand concentrates in a limited supply of shares, prices can move more aggressively in either direction.
That setup may complicate the relationship between Evernorth’s stock price and the value of its XRP treasury during its first sessions as a public company. A limited float, merger-related speculation and XRP’s own volatility can each create substantial deviations between the company’s market capitalization and the value of its underlying token holdings.
Premium or discount will shape the trade
Evernorth’s share price will effectively represent a package of XRP exposure, cash, treasury-management expectations and public-market trading dynamics. Traders evaluating the stock will need to compare its implied value against the company’s XRP holdings and net cash position, while allowing for liabilities, expenses and the value assigned to Jeandesboz’s active strategy.
A premium to the underlying treasury would indicate that the market is assigning value to Evernorth’s ability to generate yield or provide a more convenient public-market route to XRP exposure. A discount would suggest traders place greater weight on execution risk, token volatility, dilution concerns or the costs of maintaining the public company structure.
The initial challenge for Evernorth is straightforward: it must show that active management adds value without exposing its XRP reserve to losses that a passive treasury would avoid. Jeandesboz’s first decisions on liquidity, lending and risk controls will help determine whether the Nasdaq vehicle trades primarily as an XRP proxy or earns a valuation based on its ability to compound the token position per share.
Interested in Evernorth’s XRP strategy? Explore Ripple’s ecosystem and future in this in-depth XRP guide today.
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