It is one of the oldest questions in crypto: when prices fall and the headlines turn ugly, where does anyone actually make money? For Asheesh Birla, founder of Evernorth and a former senior figure at Ripple, the answer during the current downturn has a simple starting point: XRP.
XRP is the third-biggest digital currency by total market value, and the funds that track it have been outperforming those built around other tokens, including Bitcoin. That, Birla says, gives investors somewhere to sit while the broader market finds its feet.
“XRP ETFs are performing better than the alternative digital assets, including Bitcoin. So I think there is a lot of interest in XRP as a product. It is a very liquid asset.”
Riding Out the Winter
A crypto winter, industry shorthand for a prolonged slump in prices, tends to shake out projects that were built on hype rather than anything solid. Birla’s argument is that XRP weathers these periods better than most because it sits at the centre of a real-money use case: moving value between banks and financial institutions quickly and cheaply.
That underlying demand does not disappear when token prices drop. Banks still need to settle cross-border payments. Transactions still happen. And the fee income that runs through the XRP network does not stop just because retail investors are nervous.
Evernorth, Birla’s firm, focuses exclusively on XRP, a deliberate choice he says makes the business more focused and, critically, keeps liquidity pooled in one place rather than spread thin across dozens of competing networks.
“Digital assets are largely a liquidity business, and pooling that liquidity on fewer chains, not more, is going to make that experience better,” he added.
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