Asheesh Birla runs Evernorth like a trader, not a treasurer. While most companies park their XRP on a balance sheet and pray it goes up, he's actively deploying it through decentralized finance tools on the XRP Ledger to generate actual yield. The distinction matters. It's the difference between owning an asset and making an asset work.
Speaking at WebX 2026 in Japan, the former Ripple executive laid out his philosophy plainly. Blockchain isn't just about ownership. Real value comes from putting tokens into productive strategies that generate returns on-chain. Evernorth plans to build yield mechanisms around XRP specifically, treating the token as operational infrastructure rather than a passive corporate holding.
The Tokenized Assets Boom
Real-world assets on the XRP Ledger have exploded. The market sits at roughly $3.6 billion now, up 24 times over the past year. That's not hype. That's institutions and platforms actually moving real-world value onto blockchain, and it's happening faster than most people realize. Birla sees this trend accelerating. Companies will increasingly hunt for ways to generate returns from tokenized assets instead of letting capital sit idle.
The XRP Ledger, he argued, is built for this shift. It's designed to handle the infrastructure needed for productive on-chain activity in a way other networks aren't optimized for.
RLUSD Catalyzes Activity
Ripple's dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, has become a quiet catalyst. Since its launch, activity on the XRP Ledger has surged. Transactions settled in U.S. dollars and RLUSD have grown 12-fold. That's not incremental growth. That's a shift in how people actually use the network. A stablecoin that works reliably removes friction from on-chain transactions and opens doors for companies that need predictable settlement.
Birla's message cuts through the noise: holding crypto is passive. Using it is active. The companies that figure out how to be active will capture value others leave on the table.
This is informational content about crypto market developments and company strategies. It is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any asset.
