Evernode CEO Ashish Birla (애시시 벌라) said XRP is returning to playing a foundation-layer role in the global financial system.

On June 19, blockchain media outlet U.Today reported that Birla, in an interview with an XRPL Foundation official, shared the background to XRP’s early development along with his current business plans.

The focus is Evernode’s future business direction. Evernode is preparing for a Nasdaq listing, with the ticker presented as XRPN. Birla said the company will use the XRP Ledger as the foundation for its business to launch regulated DeFi products and enable individual investors to earn returns on the same terms as large funds. The company currently holds 473 million XRP on its balance sheet.

Birla revisited XRP’s starting point. He recalled that Ripple’s early office on Second Street in San Francisco in late 2013 was a very frugal environment. With no air conditioning, they worked with the windows open, and employees assembled their own desks. Co-founder Chris Larsen encouraged thrift, saying that to keep dissatisfaction from flaring up, they had to cut every cost, he said.

Birla said he had strong conviction about the organization’s 분위기 at the time. "We knew this was going to be big, with XRP as the foundation layer at the core of it," he said. "You could feel the energy in the office," he added, stressing the early team’s focus. At the time, Arthur Britto designed the structure at a whiteboard, while David Schwartz, in a separate room, was explaining how the XRP consensus system worked, he said.

The early Ripple team built infrastructure with the goal of an "Internet of value." The idea was to create an open financial network that would move tokenised assets and liquidity instantly. To test this in a real-world setting, the team also carried out its first retail payment experiment in late 2013. They persuaded the owner of a nearby Red Door Cafe to accept XRP payments, he said.

XRP was priced at about $0.02 at the time. Birla introduced that a single latte used in the experiment would have been worth about $120 to $150 at today’s XRP price, describing it as his "Bitcoin pizza" story. He said the network was already showing strong built-in capabilities even then.

He said the recollection was not just an anecdote. Birla said Evernode’s current business push is built on the same philosophy. It will carry forward the early idea of an open financial system by using the XRP Ledger as the foundation layer and rolling out DeFi products that meet regulatory requirements.

Interview participants assessed that XRP, after going through lawsuits and regulatory uncertainty, is returning to its original technical potential. They said the core of the remarks was that the built-in value exchange function seen in the early coffee payment experiment is now being linked to the design of institutional products. Attention is now on whether, after Evernode’s Nasdaq listing, it will follow through with actual product launches and how it will use the XRP Ledger.

.@ashgoblue on the very early days at Ripple. He said: "We knew this was going to be big, with XRP as the foundation layer at the core of it." "You could feel the energy in the office." "Arthur was at the whiteboard, while David was in the other room talking about the XRP… pic.twitter.com/8j9pdp17a7