Evernorth names former Coinbase investment exec to steer 473 million XRP treasury ahead of Nasdaq debut

XRP treasury company Evernorth has tapped former Coinbase Asset Management co-chief investment officer Hugo Jeandesboz as its investment chief Monday ahead of its Nasdaq debut.

The announcement follows Friday's completion of Evernorth's SPAC merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II. At closing, Evernorth reported holding 473 million XRP (XRP) worth roughly $672 million alongside $300 million in cash before transaction expenses.

The value of its XRP holdings places it just outside the 20 largest publicly traded corporate crypto holders, based on Bitcoin Treasuries data.

Jeandesboz will lead treasury allocation, liquidity management and actively manage Evernorth's XRP holdings, under founder and CEO Asheesh Birla. During his time at Coinbase, Jeandesboz led investment strategies for the exchange's institutional clients and was Coinbase's lead derivatives trader before that.

Evernorth wants to move beyond the buy-and-hold model of many traditional crypto treasury companies. It plans to deploy XRP through lending, providing liquidity and other yield strategies to boost its XRP-per-share metric. 

"Capturing them takes someone who has priced risk on institutional desks in both traditional and digital asset markets," Birla said of opportunities he sees emerging in XRP lending and DeFi.

"We would rather be a participant in this transformation than a spectator of it," he wrote.

The listing follows whipsaw trading action in Armada II shares in the lead-up to the closing of the merger. The stock rose from around $10.68 over the past two weeks to as high as $53 on Oct. 2, before closing Friday at $17.09. Shares then climbed to $18.57 in after-hours trading.