An XRP treasury company backed by Ripple is a shareholder vote away from Nasdaq

The Securities and Exchange Commission has cleared the registration for Evernorth, a San Francisco company set up to hold $XRP on a public balance sheet, leaving one shareholder vote before it can list on Nasdaq.

Evernorth is merging with Armada Acquisition Corp. II, a shell company that raised money from investors to buy a private business and take it public without a traditional listing.

Armada's shareholders vote on Sept. 30, and the combined company would trade as XRPN. Evernorth expects the deal to close in late September or October, the company shared with CoinDesk.

Ripple, the company closely linked to $XRP and holds a large share of the supply, is an investor in Evernorth alongside Arrington Capital, Japan's SBI Group, Pantera Capital, Kraken and GSR. Asheesh Birla, Evernorth's founder and chief executive, ran Ripple's payments business for over a decade before leaving.

Companies that put a single cryptocurrency on their balance sheet have generally bought and held, following the model Strategy established with bitcoin.

But Evernorth intends to put capital into $XRP infrastructure and manage the holdings to increase the amount of $XRP behind each share over time, though the announcement does not say how.

The structure has drawn scrutiny elsewhere in the market. Treasury companies trade at a premium or discount to the value of the tokens they hold, and several bitcoin holders have spent recent months below the value of their own reserves, which removes the ability to raise money by issuing shares.

$XRP traded near $1.41 on Thursday, up over 27% on the week.