The XRP Stock That Doubled Before It Listed
There are two ways to own apples. You can buy a basket, or you can buy the orchard.
The basket is simple. A fixed pile of fruit, worth whatever apples are worth today. The orchard comes with the same fruit sitting in the barn, plus a crew whose entire job is to grow more of it every season. Because of that crew, the orchard gets priced on people’s guesses about how good they’ll be.
For most of XRP’s life, holders could only buy the basket.
Next week, they’ll get an orchard. 🍎
The Week the Market Noticed
Evernorth is the Ripple-backed XRP treasury company going public by merging with a blank-check shell called Armada Acquisition Corp. II. That shell already trades under the ticker XRPN, and this week it woke up.
Early in the week, XRPN jumped roughly 25% intraday to around $13.24 from a $10.58 close. Wednesday's shareholder vote passed and the stock closed at $16.40.
On Thursday it climbed another 43% to close at $23.43, and Friday's open was shaping up near $28. (As of this writing, it’s trading at $31).
XRPN share price this week against the $10 private placement price.
The deal is expected to close October 7, with Evernorth’s Class A shares trading on Nasdaq under XRPN beginning October 8.
How We Got Here
Evernorth launched in October 2025 with a big swing: more than $1 billion in gross proceeds, including $200 million from SBI, plus Ripple, Rippleworks, Pantera Capital, Kraken, GSR, and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. The CEO is Asheesh Birla, a longtime Ripple executive who stepped down from Ripple’s board to run it.
The SPAC changed its ticker to XRPN on October 30, 2025.
The original plan was to close in the first quarter of 2026. Then XRP slid (as we’re all aware). The deal was signed when XRP was valued at $2.37, and it’s trading around $1.50 today.
XRP’s price decline produced the part of this story I like most.
In August, Evernorth rewrote its deal so the number of shares issued at closing is based on XRP’s value at closing, instead of the price locked in at signing. Every advance-funding investor, representing more than 95% of committed capital, signed off. When it came time to close, 100% of funders showed up.
Translation: the insiders who wrote the checks agreed to take fewer shares so public buyers wouldn’t inherit a cap table priced at last year’s XRP. Treasury deals rarely get renegotiated in the public’s favor. This one did.
Evernorth’s path from launch to listing.
What They’re Trying to Build
At closing, Evernorth expects to hold about 473 million XRP, which would make it the largest publicly traded pure-play XRP treasury. The cash side is roughly $300 million gross: $225 million from private placements, a $30 million convertible note, and about $48 million left in the SPAC trust.
The goal is one number: XRP per share.
Think of it as fruit per acre. Evernorth plans to grow it through institutional lending, liquidity provisioning, and DeFi yield, using Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin as an on-ramp into XRP-based decentralized finance. It also plans to run XRP Ledger validators, and it has announced a collaboration with Doppler Finance on institutional XRP infrastructure.
That’s the orchard part. A spot ETF tracks XRP’s price. Evernorth’s value will depend on both XRP and management’s ability to grow XRP per share.
How to Price an Orchard
Treasury companies get valued with one multiple, and Strategy taught the market how to read it.
It’s called mNAV: the company’s market value divided by the value of the crypto it holds. At 1.0x, you’re paying exactly for what’s in the barn. Anything above that is what you’re paying for the crew.
The roughly $740 million market cap quoted at Thursday’s close uses the old SPAC’s share count, about 31.6 million shares. At closing, Evernorth issues new shares to everyone who contributed XRP and cash. The merger filings point to roughly 85 to 100 million shares once you count the units held by Ripple and other members, which can be exchanged into public stock.
With the stock at $28 and XRP at $1.50, the math looks like this:
Book value: 473 million XRP is worth about $710 million, or roughly $7 to $8.50 of XRP per share.
Market value: about $2.4 to $2.8 billion, fully diluted.
mNAV: roughly 3.4x to 3.9x.
Parity price: XRP would need to trade around $5.00 to $6.00 for $28 to equal book value.
How to read XRPN’s multiple. Estimates pending the closing share count.
For context, Strategy peaked near 3.4x in late 2024 after years of growing bitcoin per share. Today it trades around 1.06x.
XRPN is opening above Strategy’s peak multiple on day one, with no track record yet so this should be taken with a grain of salt.
A premium can be rational. When a treasury company trades at 3x, every new share it sells buys about three times its weight in XRP. Selling 10% more stock at that multiple would lift XRP per share by roughly 18%. That’s the flywheel, and it only spins while the premium holds.
Yield can’t carry the load alone: at 5% a year in XRP, it takes over 20 years to triple XRP per share.
The number to watch every quarter is XRP per share. If it climbs, the crew is earning its premium. If it stalls, buyers are paying three to four times book value for an ETF.
A note for the spreadsheet crowd: mNAV varies by method. Basic counts common shares only, fully diluted adds warrants and exchangeable units, and enterprise adds debt and subtracts cash. I’m using fully diluted here and will update with the exact share count from the closing filing next week.
The Bull Case 🐂
The front door. Plenty of money can’t hold a token. Pensions, many RIAs, retirement accounts, and corporate treasuries can hold a Nasdaq stock. XRPN gives that money a ticker.
The compounding engine. If Evernorth earns even a modest yield in XRP terms, the XRP per share grows every year while an ETF’s stays flat. Over a decade, small differences in fruit per acre become big differences in harvest.
The capital markets flywheel. This is Saylor’s playbook. When a treasury company trades above the value of its holdings, it can sell new shares and buy more of the asset, raising XRP per share for everyone. Evernorth also has the convertible note, 4% payment-in-kind notes maturing in 2031, as dry powder.
The cap table. Ripple, SBI, Kraken, and Pantera are long-term XRP ecosystem players, and the August reset showed they’ll bend to keep public holders whole. That’s alignment you can see in a filing.
The Bear Case 🐻
You’re paying double for the barn. Private placement investors subscribed at $10 per share, and the reset was designed to line the share count up with the treasury’s value at closing. At $22, buyers are paying something near twice that for the crew’s future work. I watched Strategy’s premium go from 3.4x its Bitcoin in late 2024 to below 1.0x this year. Premiums are claims on future agreement, and they can evaporate.
Thin float, wild swings. The SPAC trust held $241.2 million as of June 30, and about $48 million is expected at closing, which implies most public SPAC holders redeemed for cash. A small tradable float can move a lot on a little buying. It can also fall fast once placement shares bought at $10 become sellable.
It’s still XRP. Because Evernorth’s value is tied directly to its holdings, the stock acts as a leveraged proxy for the token’s price. If XRP drops 30%, no amount of yield saves the quarter.
Yield isn’t free. Lending and DeFi carry counterparty and smart contract risk, and XRPL DeFi is still young. The crew has to grow fruit without burning down the orchard.
Where This Leaves Us
For years, the XRP community has argued the asset deserves institutional respect.(For the record - and as a long-time holder - I agree 100%)
Evernorth is the most serious attempt yet to build the vehicle for it, with real backers, real holdings, and a deal structure that bent toward public shareholders when it didn’t have to. That’s worth being excited about.
But make no mistake…the price you pay still matters.
A great orchard bought at twice the value of the fruit needs a great crew to earn the difference, and the market won’t grade them until they start working. Watch two numbers after October 8: XRP per share, and the stock’s premium to the XRP it holds.
Stay frosty Fam! ❄️
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Matthew Snider is the founder of BitFinance and principal at Block3 Strategy Group, where he advises emerging digital asset fund managers and RIAs on fund operations and compliance frameworks. He holds both Series 65 and Series 7 licenses, and is the author of Warren Buffett in a Web3 World.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security or digital asset. Digital assets and the securities discussed here are highly volatile and can result in the total loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Consult your own financial, legal, and tax advisors before making any investment decision.