Sweeney's Billboard Beats Ripple's Nasdaq ... 'I Knew She Had XRP'

Ripple Labs CTO Emeritus David Schwartz traveled to Times Square on October 14 to celebrate a Nasdaq milestone for a major XRP treasury ... and ended up with a Sydney Sweeney selfie that went more viral than the event itself.

Schwartz, who built the XRP Ledger and posts on X as @JoelKatz, posed for a photo outside the exchange. Behind him was Sweeney's Novig "Just Sports" billboard. He quickly followed with a second image from the same spot, captioned "Got it this time," showing the Evernorth green Nasdaq branding he meant to capture.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson saw the first post and replied: "I knew she had $XRP."

The selfie scoreboard was unambiguous. The Sweeney billboard post logged approximately 225,000 views. The Evernorth post drew around 143,000. The wrong billboard won by roughly 82,000 views.

Evernorth, led by Asheesh Birla, a former Ripple board member, holds approximately 473 million XRP and raised $300 million in gross proceeds. The company began trading on Nasdaq as XRPN on October 12 and rang the exchange's closing bell on October 14. That was the moment Schwartz was there to document.

The Novig "Just Sports" campaign launched September 9. It has been a sustained flashpoint since. Gymnast Gracie Kramer said the campaign marketed women's sports "through the male gaze." British sprinter Amy Hunt said it gave an inaccurate picture of what women in sports look like. Per Fox News, Sweeney said she was "flattered" and repeated her support for the campaign.

Not the first XRP crossover

Unverified reports circulated in 2025 that Ripple had retained Sweeney for a promotional campaign. No official announcement followed. In July 2024, attackers hijacked her X account to promote a fraudulent celebrity-themed token. The pattern is consistent: Sweeney's name amplifies anything it touches in crypto spaces, whether she is actually involved or not.

The billboard won the Nasdaq

The selfie data makes a brand argument Novig cannot manufacture for itself. At the most XRP-forward event of 2026, the billboard placed to make a sports prediction app look culturally credible ended up being the most-viewed part of the day. It beat the Nasdaq milestone on its own terms, measured in the attention currency that actually counts in crypto.

Neither Sweeney nor Novig had commented on the moment at the time of this writing. Schwartz, per his own follow-up post, eventually got the right photo.

Evernorth continues trading on Nasdaq as XRPN; the Novig campaign continues its run.

Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site with no affiliation with Sydney Sweeney, Novig, Ripple, Evernorth, or any party named in this story. This piece draws on published sources listed below.

Sweeney's Billboard Beats Ripple's Nasdaq ... 'I Knew She Had XRP'

Not the first XRP crossover

The billboard won the Nasdaq

Sources & further reading

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