governance
Evernorth hires former Coinbase co-CIO Jeandesboz to run 473M XRP ahead of Nasdaq debut
The Ripple-backed XRP treasury firm names Hugo Jeandesboz, previously co-CIO at Coinbase Asset Management, as investment chief; treasury sits at 473M XRP (~$672M).
Evernorth, the XRP treasury vehicle built around Ripple's token, has appointed Hugo Jeandesboz as its investment chief, per The Block. Jeandesboz joins from Coinbase Asset Management, where he served as co-chief investment officer — a role confirmed on Coinbase Asset Management's 2026 market-outlook event listing alongside co-CIO Sarah Schroeder, co-CIO Douglas Wilson and president Anthony Bassili. Before that he was Coinbase's lead derivatives trader, running strategies for institutional clients.
The treasury
- 473,000,000 XRP on the balance sheet (≈ $672M at current prices).
- $300M in cash before transaction expenses.
- The company sits just outside the 20 largest publicly traded corporate crypto holders, per Bitcoin Treasuries.
The XRP position was assembled through two main channels disclosed in Evernorth's S-4: a sponsor contribution of roughly 211M XRP from Arrington Capital, and ~127M XRP committed by Ripple at closing. The balance came from open-market purchases funded by the SPAC proceeds.
The deal that got them here
Evernorth completed its SPAC merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II on Friday, Oct. 9 — the "previous Friday" cited by The Block. The combined company is preparing a Nasdaq listing; Armada's ticker XRPN is referenced in Evernorth's filings as the post-merger symbol. The SEC declared Evernorth's S-4 effective on Aug. 27, 2026, with closing then targeted for late Q3 or early Q4.
Armada II's share price arc tells the SPAC story on its own:
- About $10.68 two weeks before the merger.
- Peaked at $53 on Oct. 2 (the week of closing).
- Closed Friday at $17.09; $18.57 in after-hours.
The gap between the Oct. 2 high and today's price is where a treasury firm earns its investment chief: Jeandesboz inherits a dollar-and-XRP balance sheet marked against a share price that priced in a steeper NAV premium than it now holds.
Why the hire reads a specific way
Evernorth founder and CEO Asheesh Birla framed Jeandesboz's mandate around institutional XRP lending and DeFi: "Capturing them takes someone who has priced risk on institutional desks in both traditional and digital asset markets," Birla told The Block. On strategy: "We would rather be a participant in this transformation than a spectator of it."
The signal in the role: Evernorth is not a passive hold-the-token treasury. Jeandesboz's prior scope at Coinbase Asset Management — co-CIO oversight across institutional products, including derivatives — maps onto the yield- and lending-side activity Birla is pointing at. For an XRP-denominated balance sheet, the obvious tools are RLUSD-backed basis trades, XRP Ledger-native lending venues and the Flare / Wrapped-XRP DeFi stack.
What to watch
- The first disclosure on how much of the 473M XRP position is deployed vs. held in cold storage.
- Whether Evernorth routes any treasury flow through Ripple's and Standard Chartered's new RLUSD custody line in Dubai.
- The Nasdaq listing-start date and whether the ticker changes from XRPN at the moment of the open.
- SBI's $200M commitment at the SPAC stage — whether it converts to an ongoing partnership on the public company's balance-sheet operations.
Context
Evernorth joins the small group of single-asset crypto treasury vehicles (Strategy on BTC, Bitmine on ETH) that go public via a SPAC and then recruit an institutional-asset-management CIO to run yield on the inventory. The XRP cohort is the newest leg: an institutional CIO hire reads as the step after the merger closes and before the treasury has to publicly explain its first return number.