Korean institutions enter the XRP ecosystem through a back door

The contract states that the main use of the secured funds is to purchase XRP.

The US company Evernorth, ahead of its listing, is running businesses related to XRP.

Evernorth currently holds 473.2 million XRP, worth about US$650 million as of September.

Japan's SBI invested US$200 million, and Ripple contributed 126.8 million XRP as investors.

The company plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN through a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) merger.

If shares are issued without accompanying XRP purchases, XRP per share could be diluted.

Evernorth uses institutional lending of its XRP to earn interest income.

It creates returns by providing liquidity to the XRP/RLUSD pool on the XRP Ledger and earns premiums by writing options on its holdings.

It also plans to build revenue from participating in the network by operating XRP Ledger validators.

Sagar Shah, Evernorth's chief business officer, stresses that on-chain lending is safer than traditional DeFi.

As the XRP Ledger's lending feature is activated and products are prepared by platforms such as Clearpool, the funds Evernorth supplies are expected to be a key driver of the lending ecosystem.

Apart from the US$30M convertible bond, Evernorth carries almost no debt and aims to generate operating income rather than simply stockpiling coins.

The two companies' models differ in how they threaten shareholder value if the coin price falls.

Since the government's 2017 measures, domestic corporations and institutions have found it difficult to obtain real-name accounts at crypto exchanges, which restricts direct buying and selling of crypto assets.

Domestic institutions are therefore pursuing indirect participation in the XRP ecosystem through bonds of US-listed companies, with Kyobo AIM Asset Management, a Kyobo Life affiliate, managing the trust.

The roadmap presented by the Financial Services Commission has not yet implemented investment-purpose accounts for listed companies and professional investment firms.

Because institutions cannot easily hold XRP directly, they chose an indirect approach by acquiring Evernorth's convertible bonds.

Kyobo Life Vice President Park Jin-ho described this work not as digital asset investment but as verifying that existing financial assets function properly on blockchain.

Since September last year, Kyobo Life has used Ripple infrastructure to cut government bond settlement from two days to near real time.

It is also testing stablecoin settlement so that trades can take place even when banks are closed.

In tokenized securities it plans to fractionalize rights to assets such as real estate and artwork, and to use unlisted shares and content.

Working with Circle on stablecoins, it targets the Kyobo Book Centre platform and foreign-currency exchange demand, while also testing real-asset linkage that connects Korean assets to Japan and Singapore with SBI.

In March 2024, Kyobo Life's approval of its acquisition of a stake in Japan's SBI Savings Bank strengthened ties between the two countries' financial firms.

On September 11, 2024, the Kyobo AIM trust acquired Evernorth convertible bonds, and Korean capital is flowing into Evernorth, where Japan's SBI joined as the largest anchor investor.

At XRP Seoul 2026, held October 3, Ripple is the title sponsor and Evernorth CEO Asheesh Birla will speak.

The event will feature sessions on institutional XRP strategies and how to adopt digital assets using the XRP Ledger.

Major domestic financial firms including Woori Bank, KakaoBank and K Bank are participating, and topics range widely across spot ETFs, real-asset tokenization and AI agent payments.

When institutions want to borrow XRP, Evernorth acts as the window that supplies the tokens, and it injects funds into XRP and RLUSD liquidity pools to ease price volatility.

Investors can benefit from the growth effect of XRP through holding Evernorth shares without directly owning the coin.