XRP Vs Bitcoin: Ex-Ripple Board Member Explains Why His $XRPN Bet Beats Saylor’s Model

Evernorth holds more than 473 million XRP, making it the largest publicly traded XRP treasury. Its CEO, Asheesh Birla, says the company will deliberately move slowly in deciding how to earn a return on those tokens.

In an interview on the Thinking Crypto podcast, Birla said Evernorth will not be a passive holder. He also said there is no timeline or set percentage for how much of its XRP will be put to work. He warned that investors should “think twice” when crypto yields look unusually high.

Anti-Strategy Treasury

Birla said he does not intend to copy Strategy, the company that started the digital asset treasury trend with Bitcoin. He said Strategy’s approach of holding Bitcoin and using traditional financial engineering suits an asset that can be moved and stored but has limited uses on its own blockchain.

He argued that XRP is different because it was built for financial applications. That gives Evernorth options Bitcoin treasury companies do not have:

• Traditional yield: returns earned through conventional financial channels
• On-chain yield: putting XRP to work directly on the XRP Ledger
• DeFi lending: borrowing and lending products now coming to the XRP ecosystem

Birla also said Evernorth’s launch comes as interest in putting real-world assets on blockchains is growing, which he expects to support its plans.

Why Evernorth Is Holding Back

Birla was asked whether Evernorth would deploy 50% of its XRP or all of it. He did not give a number. He said the company first needs markets deep enough to offer what he called the right risk-adjusted yield.

“We’re not going to sprint,” he said, describing the plan as “methodical.”

He also referred to crypto’s history of reckless lending. “There was a lot of wild, wild west in crypto. I hope we’re beyond that now,” he said. If returns look like “something you’ve never seen before,” he said, “you should think twice.”

What It Means For XRP

Evernorth’s 473 million XRP is one of the largest single pools of the token outside Ripple. How quickly it moves into XRP Ledger lending and DeFi markets will affect how much liquidity those markets get. Birla’s comments suggest that money will arrive gradually as those markets mature.