There's a new major buyer circling around XRP (XRP 0.68%), and if everything goes according to plan, sometime in the start of 2026, it'll make a $1 billion deposit. Evernorth, a Ripple-backed XRP digital asset treasury (DAT) company, plans to go public via a merger and raise more than $1 billion just to accumulate XRP on the open market. This would make it the largest dedicated XRP treasurer on the market and be a major catalyst for the coin. The deal is scheduled to close in the first quarter of 2026, with purchases starting shortly thereafter.
This new development is one more reason to buy some XRP for yourself. Let's investigate why that's the case.
Supply is about to get a lot tighter
Evernorth buying up a lot of XRP is highly bullish, assuming it happens after it goes public via its proposed merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). To understand the effect that its purchasing could have if the merger goes through, it helps to consider XRP's recent markers.
For reference, XRP itself has a market cap of just over $159 billion. Its price is at $2.66 per coin, and there are roughly 60 billion XRP currently in circulation. So if a new digital asset treasury business like Evernorth buys $1 billion of XRP in that price zone, it can absorb on the order of 375 million XRP, or roughly 0.6% of the circulating supply. Therefore, the purchase is a fairly significant portion of the supply, and, given that Evernorth has committed to making its investment on the open market rather than via an over-the-counter (OTC) deal, it'll definitely have a positive effect on price.
CRYPTO: XRP
Key Data Points
Importantly, this buyer would join a growing set of slow-moving holders in financial institutions and other DATs, which are traditionally hesitant to offload assets once their capital is committed. What's more, there are currently spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) being considered for approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which if greenlit could create additional long-horizon demand from asset issuers that must source coins. As these new groups of big buyers constrain XRP's float even further, the coin's supply picture will become more difficult for the buyers that follow, potentially on a permanent basis.
In other words, the price of XRP will probably be going up.
How to think like a long-term investor here
Buying XRP only to sell it during the first downturn is a sensible way to get upside related to Evernorth going public and buying $1 billion of the coin.
As discussed previously, the new twist on the coin's near-term upside case is that the arrival of a large, publicly listed XRP treasury company sometime in early 2026 can and will be a durable sink for supply, much like corporate treasuries or ETFs are for other assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. If ETF approvals arrive before the end of this year as expected, asset issuers will need to acquire XRP on the market to seed and scale funds, creating another lane of structural demand. Thus, it makes the most sense to start buying XRP before these potential catalysts have a chance to have an effect.
It's also logical to continue buying XRP over the long term once these catalysts pass. The XRP Ledger's (XRPL's) institutional roadmap continues to extend its escrow and compliance tooling to include tools for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), making it easier for regulated users to hold value on-chain, and granting the coin an enormous new market for use. On the margin, that can invite additional balance sheet capital from buyers that tend to buy and hold for long periods rather than churn.
There are real risks to balance if you're considering an investment, as usual. If Evernorth's plans for its capital raising or its stock exchange listings slip, if it buys XRP more slowly than expected, or if it hedges its exposure by investing in another coin at the same time, the near-term supply absorption could be smaller than our calculations suggest.
No matter what happens, investors will need to hold their coins for at least a couple of years to get the full advantage of the new value that these catalysts could bring. Assuming Evernorth completes its raise and executes as stated, the float should tighten further, and that should support higher prices over a multi-year horizon. Lock in some capital for the long run, because that's when XRP's scarcity and institutional adoption could mesh together into something wonderful for holders.
