Ashish Birla (아시시 벌라), chief executive of Evernorth, said crypto treasury firms are finding it harder to grow by simply stockpiling coins. They need a structure that generates recurring income by using the assets they hold, he said.

The Crypto Basic, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Tuesday that Ripple-backed treasury firm Evernorth plans to move beyond strategically accumulating XRP. It aims to make XRP Ledger-based tokenisation and decentralised finance (DeFi) central to its business.

In an interview with Bloomingbit, Birla said the first-generation model for digital asset treasury companies (DAT) was to boost corporate value by relying on rising crypto prices. He said the sector is now moving to a second stage of generating revenue from digital assets on the balance sheet. He said he aims to grow Evernorth into an XRP-based financial company rather than a simple treasury vehicle.

Evernorth is designing its business around tokenised real-world assets (RWA). It is reviewing the potential for lending, liquidity provision and asset management by using DeFi protocols on the XRP Ledger. The goal is to generate yields from the XRP it holds.

Birla rated the XRP Ledger as one of the blockchain networks that are competitive for tokenisation. He cited native support for tokenised financial assets, low transaction costs and fast settlement speed as strengths. He also said the size of tokenised assets on the XRP Ledger has grown to about $2 billion, about double from less than $1 billion a year ago. He sees rising demand for issuing real-world assets.

He said institutional participation is also expanding. Guggenheim Partners has tokenised commercial paper on the XRP Ledger, and Franklin Templeton is developing a tokenised money market fund (MMF) on the network. Evernorth plans to support expansion of the XRP Ledger tokenisation ecosystem in line with this trend.

He also said the growing volume of tokenised assets would broaden the uses of XRP. He said XRP could have more opportunities to be used in financial services such as liquidity provision and lending, rather than remaining only as a reserve asset. He estimated the global market for tokenised real-world assets at about $30 billion and stressed that it could be a big opportunity for companies seeking recurring revenue from their digital asset holdings.

South Korea was also cited as a promising market. Birla said demand for XRP is strong in South Korea and institutional interest in stablecoins and tokenisation is growing. He said the company plans to accelerate its expansion into South Korea once its U.S. stock market listing process is completed. The listing is under review by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after the filing of an amended S-4.

Discussions with South Korea's financial sector also suggest an atmosphere of preparing for a shift to tokenisation. Birla said many companies are watching global regulatory trends. He said progress in U.S. digital asset legislation, especially the "Clarity bill", could promote a broader regulatory framework and speed up adoption of tokenisation in South Korea and other markets. Against this backdrop, Evernorth's strategic shift shows that how holdings are managed, rather than crypto holdings themselves, is becoming the key to competitiveness for treasury firms.