$XRP is returning to its main historical mission — serving as the fundamental base layer of the global financial system. Ashish Birla, CEO of the institutional company Evernorth, said this in an exclusive interview with Vet from the XRPL Foundation.
Ahead of Evernorth’s long-awaited listing on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN, Birla shared unique memories from 2013 and explained why $XRP‘s technological “magic” is especially relevant today.
A Spartan office on Second Street
According to Birla, in late 2013, Ripple’s first team worked in extremely modest conditions on Second Street in San Francisco. The office had no air conditioning, so employees simply opened the windows. They assembled their desks by hand, while co-founder Chris Larsen urged everyone to save on everything just to “keep the lights on”.
However, Birla says the energy inside the office was enormous. While Arthur Britto was designing the architecture on a whiteboard and David Schwartz was explaining the mechanics of the unique consensus system, the team clearly understood one thing: $XRP was the foundational layer of the entire story.
.@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— Vet (@Vet_X0) June 19, 2026
They were building infrastructure for the “Internet of Value” — an open financial network for the instant movement of tokenized assets and liquidity.
To test this concept in the real world, Ripple’s team conducted its first retail experiment in late 2013. They managed to convince the manager of the nearby Red Door Cafe to accept payments in $XRP.
At the time, the token was worth only about two cents ($0.02), and at today’s $XRP price, a latte from that experiment would have cost around $120–150. Birla jokingly calls it his personal “Bitcoin pizza” story and recalls that even then, the network was already demonstrating incredible built-in functionality.
Birla wants to carry this philosophy of an open financial system into Evernorth’s current activities, as the company, which has accumulated 473 million $XRP on its balance sheet, plans to use $XRP Ledger as the base layer for launching regulated DeFi products, allowing retail investors to earn yield on equal terms with large funds.
According to the interview participants, after years of lawsuits and regulatory uncertainty, $XRP is finally returning to its true technological potential of built-in value exchange that was embedded in it from the very first cup of coffee at Red Door Cafe.
