Evernorth's XRP treasury hits Nasdaq and jumps as much as 13%, but 80% of the SPAC's public investors had already cashed out

Evernorth, a Ripple-backed company built to hold XRP and earn yield on it, made its Nasdaq debut on Monday under the ticker XRPN. The shares rose about 5% at the opening print, Cointelegraph reported, and as much as about 13% during the session before most of the gain faded. Decrypt put them at $16.64 by midday, against $17.09 on October 9, when the merger with the blank-check company Armada Acquisition Corp. II closed, and an intraday high of $53 on October 2.

The listing comes with a thin float. About 80.3% of Armada's public shareholders redeemed some 18.5 million shares at about $10.58 each, Decrypt reported, pulling roughly $195 million out of the deal and leaving about 4.5 million shares in public hands.

Evernorth holds about 473 million XRP and about $300 million in cash before expenses. It has named Hugo Jeandesboz, a former co-chief investment officer at Coinbase Asset Management, as chief investment officer to run allocation, liquidity and yield strategies on the XRP, The Block reported. "We would rather be a participant in this transformation than a spectator of it," founder and chief executive Asheesh Birla wrote.

The company plans to ring Nasdaq's closing bell on Wednesday, October 14.