XRPN rings in the public markets with 473M XRP, ring goes the other way at the closing bell

Evernorth Holdings began trading on Nasdaq on Monday under the ticker $XRPN, completing a business combination with Armada Acquisition Corp. II that closed on October 9 and positioning the company as the largest publicly traded pure-play $XRP treasury. The listing follows a SPAC merger rather than a traditional initial public offering, with Nasdaq reassigning XRPN to Evernorth's Class A shares and XRPNW to its warrants. Evernorth plans to ring the Nasdaq closing bell on October 14, with leadership, investors and members of the $XRP ecosystem expected to attend.

Evernorth enters the public markets holding approximately 473 million $XRP, alongside roughly $300 million in gross cash proceeds before transaction expenses. The company's backers include Ripple, SBI Group, Arrington Capital, Pantera Capital, Kraken and GSR, with some investors contributing $XRP directly. Tokyo-listed SBI Holdings now controls 39.9% of Evernorth's voting shares, while the fund of Arrington Capital, which sponsored the SPAC, holds 19.9%, and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen is tied to 9.9%. Armada shareholders approved the combination on September 30, and an October 6 SEC filing had moved the intended listing date from October 8 due to administrative matters.

Evernorth has appointed Hugo Jeandesboz, formerly Co-Chief Investment Officer at Coinbase Asset Management, as Chief Investment Officer to lead treasury strategy, including treasury allocation, liquidity management and the active management of the company's $XRP holdings. Founder and CEO Asheesh Birla, a former senior Ripple executive, said the company aims to "grow XRP per share over time," with strategies including XRP lending, liquidity provision, decentralized finance yield, tokenization and blockchain infrastructure projects. The active treasury model is designed to generate income from the holdings rather than simply accumulate the token.

The debut drew muted reaction from both equity and token markets. $XRPN climbed to $19.38 before reversing, ending the session at $16.91, down 1.05%, on nearly 1.29 million shares traded, according to Yahoo Finance and Nasdaq data. The stock had touched an intraday high of $53 on October 2 and closed that Friday at $39.42, before sliding to $17.09 on October 9, the day the merger closed. About 80.3% of Armada's public shareholders, holding 18.5 million shares, chose redemption at approximately $10.58 per share, pulling roughly $195 million out of the deal before it closed. That left only about 4.5 million original public shares, a small float that can amplify price moves on small order flow.

Evernorth's $XRP holdings are worth significantly less than the company paid for them. Merger documents priced $XRP at $2.37 at signing, while the $1.43 reference price used in the deal's closing filing values the stash at about $677 million, well below the more than $1 billion in funding Evernorth touted when the deal was first announced in October 2025. $XRP traded near $1.39 on Monday with $1.48 billion in 24-hour volume, giving the token a market cap of roughly $87.8 billion and a fifth-place ranking among cryptocurrencies, per CoinGecko data. The debut itself does not automatically generate fresh buying pressure, since much of the treasury came from existing $XRP contributed in exchange for equity, and investors should monitor whether Evernorth announces actual token purchases in the coming weeks.