Ripple-Backed XRP Treasury Firm Evernorth Clears Final Hurdle Ahead of Public Debut

A new corporate vehicle built almost entirely around a single cryptocurrency is about to join Wall Street. Evernorth, a firm backed by Ripple and billed as the “largest pure-play” XRP treasury company, has cleared its last regulatory and shareholder obstacle and is set to begin trading publicly on October 8.

The breakthrough came Sept. 30, when shareholders of Armada Acquisition Corp. II — a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC — voted to approve a merger with Evernorth. That approval effectively closes the loop on a reverse-merger strategy that has become a favored shortcut for crypto companies seeking a stock-market listing without going through a traditional initial public offering.

What sets Evernorth apart from the wave of corporate crypto buyers that followed Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-hoarding playbook is its singular focus on XRP, the token issued in association with Ripple Labs. According to disclosures tied to the merger, Evernorth is sitting on a treasury of roughly 473 million XRP — a position that, at XRP’s current price near $1.50, represents hundreds of millions of dollars in holdings and underscores just how much institutional money has begun flowing into assets beyond Bitcoin and Ether.

The deal reflects a broader shift in how companies are courting crypto-curious investors. Rather than building a business that merely uses blockchain technology, an emerging class of “treasury companies” essentially functions as a public proxy for a specific coin, letting shareholders gain exposure to that asset’s price swings through a familiar, regulated stock ticker. Bitcoin had Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy). Ethereum has attracted its own treasury vehicles. Now XRP — long associated with Ripple’s cross-border payments business and its years-long legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — has one of its own.

Ripple’s fingerprints on the deal are notable. The company has spent years trying to shed the regulatory cloud that followed its SEC lawsuit and has increasingly leaned into partnerships and corporate structures that tie XRP more closely to mainstream finance. A dedicated, Ripple-backed treasury firm going public via a SPAC merger fits that pattern: it gives institutional and retail investors alike a vehicle to bet on XRP’s price without directly custodying the token themselves.

SPAC mergers like the one between Armada and Evernorth have gained renewed traction in 2025 and 2026 as digital-asset firms look for faster, less onerous routes to public markets compared with a conventional IPO. These transactions often draw added scrutiny, however, since they typically involve less upfront regulatory vetting than traditional listings — a trade-off investors in newly public crypto treasury firms will need to weigh.

Whether Evernorth’s debut marks the start of a trend or a one-off experiment remains to be seen. But its arrival adds another entry to a fast-growing list of publicly traded companies whose fortunes are now explicitly tethered to the price of a single cryptocurrency — a bet that could pay off handsomely in a bull run, or expose shareholders to outsized losses if XRP, or crypto markets broadly, stumble.

For now, all eyes are on Oct. 8, when Evernorth’s shares — and its roughly 473 million XRP — officially begin trading, offering the clearest test yet of investor appetite for a company built almost entirely around one coin’s future.