Arthur Hayes uzavřel celý účet Maelstromu pro směrové obchody a prodal ETH, ENA, UNI i další altcoiny v hodnotě zhruba 22,28 milionu USD kvůli makroekonomické a geopolitické nejistotě.
Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and chief investment officer of Maelstrom Fund, has exited his entire directional trading book.
On October 24, 2026, he confirmed the move on X, selling Ethereum (ETH), Ethena (ENA), Uniswap (UNI), and other altcoins worth roughly $22.28 million.
The exit signals a sharp defensive pivot amid rising macro and geopolitical uncertainty.
Hayes Closes the Book: What He Sold and Why In his own words on X, Arthur Hayes wrote: “I dumped it all. The Maelstrom directional book, took profits on $ETH, $ENA, $UNI and other shitcoins. I think we gotta go down to go up. It looks a bit dicey out there in macro and geopolitical land. Going to sit on the sidelines and wait for the all clear signal … Brrrrr.”
On-chain data from Lookonchain confirmed the scale of the exit. The sales included 6,400 ETH worth approximately $15.2 million.
Hayes also offloaded 14 million ENA (~$2.76M) and 323,000 UNI (~$2.24M). Smaller positions in ETHFI, AERO, PENDLE, and ZAMA were also closed.
The timing is striking. Just weeks ago, Hayes predicted Ethereum could reach $10K alongside massive ENA and ETHFI gains. That bullish stance is now paused. Hayes is not abandoning his long-term thesis, he is managing short-term risk.
The broader market context supports his caution. Multiple factors have been dragging crypto prices lower this week, including hawkish Fed signals, ETF outflows, and risk-off sentiment across tech and AI names. Geopolitical tensions have added another layer of uncertainty.
A Tactical Retreat, Not a Change of Heart This is not the first time Arthur Hayes has stepped back from altcoin exposure during uncertain periods.
He previously flagged crypto’s ‘no-trade zone’ and outlined his Bitcoin, Gold, and Hyperliquid outlook. That cautious streak is now showing up in his portfolio.
Earlier this year, a wallet linked to Hayes bought $5.4M in ETH following the US-Iran deal. That aggressive accumulation has now been reversed.
The pattern is consistent: Hayes cycles between deep alt exposure and full cash when macro conditions deteriorate.
His long-term structural view remains intact. Hayes has doubled down on Bitcoin reaching $1 million and laid out a potential timeline.
The current cash position is a tactical pause, not a permanent exit from crypto markets. For ENA specifically, Standard Chartered has separately forecast ENA reaching $2 by 2028.
The longer-term narrative around Ethena remains, even as Hayes steps aside in the near term. It is also worth noting that Hayes sold his entire Hyperliquid position earlier this year, sending HYPE down 4%.
That precedent shows that his sell announcements carry real market weight. ETH, ENA, and UNI could face near-term selling pressure as the market digests this exit.
Arthur Hayes said he is waiting for the ‘all clear signal’ before re-entering. Until then, Maelstrom sits in cash, and the market will be watching closely for his next move.
According to official announcements, Ethena’s synthetic USD stablecoin USDe has been natively deployed on X Layer, and users can now hold and trade USDe within the X Layer ecosystem. This deployment will further enrich the application scenarios of stablecoin assets in the X Layer ecosystem, lay a foundation for the composability of future DeFi scenarios, and provide more asset options for on-chain transactions, liquidity, and yield applications. It is reported that OKX Wallet will later support USDe staking, add USDe to its existing cycle earning feature, and allow users to participate in related on-chain strategies with one click.
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Ethena [ENA] is among the most widely used DeFi protocols, providing liquidity through its USDe stablecoin. Over the past 24 hours, the altcoin has grown by over 7%, that is, from $0.18 to $0.20.
Its daily trading volume is in excess of $405 million. However, ENA has started to face rejection, despite some analysts projecting an upside potential.
Understanding Ethena’s fundamentals Recently, Lark Davies announced he had bought a bag of Ethena tokens after conducting detailed research. The analyst cited that Ethena had generated over $1 billion in real fees and not emissions or printed tokens.
This was actual revenue, and almost none of that had gone to the people holding ENA tokens. But that was about to change, as these fees would fund a buyback mechanism.
Lark Davies argues that it could be the best bet on stablecoins and potentially better than Circle [CRCL] due to the upcoming buyback program.
Additionally, its Total Value Locked [TVL] has grown $1.32 billion since early August. Its most recent daily fees were over $4 million.
Source: DefiLlama Moreover, Janus Henderson Investors, which took a position in ENA in June, plans to use its staked USDe for cash management. This follows Ethena’s integration of Janus Henderson’s AAA CLO strategy.
These are AAA-rated floating-rate collateralized loan obligation tranches, tokenized via Centrifuge [CFG], and are eligible backing assets for USDe. This move shows traditional finance (TradFi) is catching ENA bids.
Is ENA’s correction about to end? While these are bullish signs, Ethena has been in a downtrend due to long liquidations and whale sales. However, that could come to an end soon as the price action starts to shift.
Currently, ENA is bouncing off an Optimal Trade Entry (OTE) that lies between the 0.618 and 0.786 Fibonacci Retracement levels. The altcoin has reclaimed $0.20 but needs to flip the $0.215 level into support.
This would mean the price entering the premium zone is now at a discount. The MACD has turned bullish, suggesting it’s taking into account the looming fundamental changes.
Source: ENA/USDT on TradingView Furthermore, the CVD shows that over 23.76 million ENA were bought at press time. In case the uptrend stays alive, then $0.30 becomes the next target, while failure would cause a full retracement to $0.135.
Final Summary Some analysts project a bullish trajectory for Ethena due to an upcoming buyback mechanism funded by fees. ENA was bouncing off $0.18 but needed to clear $0.215 as resistance to confirm a bullish trend shift.
Společnost Mechanism Capital údajně převedla zhruba 7 milionů tokenů ENA na KuCoin, což zvýšilo obavy z prodejního tlaku. ENA testoval podporu na úrovni 0,1870 USD; její prolomení by mohlo otevřít cestu k 0,1354 USD.
Mechanism Capital reportedly moved roughly 7 million Ethena [ENA] tokens to KuCoin, days after announcing its Series A investment in Ethena.
Source: X The transfer drew attention because the firm had publicly expressed confidence in Ethena’s long-term prospects.
In its announcement, Mechanism Capital stated,
We invest where the next paradigm begins.
The subsequent exchange deposit raised questions about the firm’s intentions as ENA’s market conditions weakened.
Exchange deposits can precede token sales, introducing concerns about potential selling pressure. However, the movement alone did not confirm that Mechanism Capital had sold the tokens.
Are ENA sellers gaining ground? Selling pressure extended beyond the reported institutional deposit, with ENA’s spot and derivatives markets showing similar conditions.
According to CryptoQuant, Ethena’s Spot Taker Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) showed seller dominance at press time. This indicated that aggressive spot sell orders exceeded aggressive buy orders over the observed period.
Meanwhile, Futures Taker CVD also showed seller dominance, reflecting similar activity across leveraged markets.
Together, these readings supported a bearish outlook for Ethena. Buyers would need to absorb that selling pressure to reduce the risk of further weakness.
Source: Ethena Futures Taker CVD on CryptoQuant Why are ENA’s top traders still bullish? ENA’s derivatives positioning, on the other hand, presented a different story despite the persistent seller dominance.
As per Coinglass analytics, ENA’s OI-Weighted Funding Rate stood positively at 0.0032% at the time of reporting. The positive percentage suggested that the long positions continued paying short positions, implying a bullish bias.
Additionally, Binance’s top trader Long/short Ratio stood at 1.59, strengthening the preference for bullish positions.
To be specific, the long accounts accounted for 61.39% of the total positions, while short accounts represented 38.61%.
These figures therefore reflected a notable divergence between bullish positioning and aggressive selling across spot and futures markets.
Despite the long traders maintaining their numerical advantage, the seller-dominant CVD implied aggressive market orders continued favoring the downside.
Source: ENA OI-Weighted Funding Rate on CoinGlass Can ENA defend its last major support? At the time of reporting, Ethena [ENA] traded around $0.1911 amid its price correction from its September highs, which extended a sequence of lower highs and lower lows.
Notably, the daily chart highlighted a sustained price retracement following ENA’s earlier rejection around the $0.2736 price region.
Subsequently, the token tested the $0.1870 support level before a slight reversal, sitting above this important support level that previously attracted demand.
Losing this support could likely extend the price pullback toward $0.1354, the next key support on the daily chart.
However, the latest daily candle printed a modest recovery, suggesting that ENA had not surrendered the $0.1870 support as it attempted a reversal.
The RSI indicator meanwhile stood at 43.29, below its moving average of 48.07.
Ultimately ENA would need to maintain the $0.1870 support for a short-term rebound toward $0.20 to emerge, otherwise the bearish technical structure would remain intact.
Source: ENA/USDT on TradingView Final Summary Mechanism Capital’s reported 7 million ENA transfer raised concerns amid persistent spot and futures selling. ENA risks falling toward $0.1354 if sellers push the price below $0.1870 support.
Token ENA společnosti Ethena za posledních 24 hodin klesl o 12,3 % na zhruba 0,184 USD poté, co prolomil úroveň podpory na 0,20 USD; likvidace dlouhých pozic přesáhly 8,2 milionu USD.
Ethena [ENA] fell sharply as bearish pressure persisted following the September Consumer Price Index (CPI) release. The altcoin breached $0.20 support and plunged to $0.182.
In doing so, Ethena erased its October and late September gains. At press time, it traded around $0.184, down 12.3% over the past day. Trading Volume rose 49% over the same period, showing increased activity during the sell-off.
Why did Ethena’s long liquidations surge? As Ethena [ENA] lost $0.20, leveraged bulls took a heavy hit. CoinGlass data showed that ENA’s price volatility exceeded 15% over 24 hours.
The sharp move increased liquidation risk, with over $8.2 million in long positions liquidated.
Source: CoinGlass Forced long closures can amplify selling pressure, leaving remaining leveraged positions vulnerable to further declines. Capital also flowed out of the Futures market. Ethena recorded $301 million in outflows against $263 million in inflows over the past day.
Source: CoinGlass That left Futures Netflow at -$38 million, reflecting net outflows. These flows alone could not establish whether traders predominantly closed longs or shorts.
Are Ethena’s whale sales adding pressure? Beyond derivatives, some large holders also reduced exposure.
Nazoku reported that a whale sold nearly $800,000 worth of ENA before the CPI release.
According to the report, the investor anticipated a lower-than-expected reading and realized roughly $50,000 in profit.
Separately, YZi Labs transferred 1.2 million ENA, worth $252,000, to exchanges, raising the prospect of additional selling.
Source: Arkham The cited report put YZi Labs’ cumulative sales at 135 million ENA. However, the latest exchange deposit alone did not confirm another sale.
Even so, Spot Exchange Netflows offered a possible counterweight to the selling pressure.
Source: CoinGlass Spot Netflow remained negative during the decline, reaching roughly -$2.4 million at press time, compared with -$4 million previously.
More tokens left tracked exchanges than entered them. This could reflect accumulation, although withdrawals alone did not confirm dip-buying.
Net outflows also narrowed, suggesting that the withdrawal trend offered less support than the previous day’s reading.
Can ENA reclaim $0.20? Ethena remained under downside pressure following heavy Long Liquidations and net Futures outflows.
If selling persisted, $0.16 could become the next downside level, with $0.13 representing a deeper bearish scenario. For buyers, reclaiming and holding $0.20 could weaken the immediate bearish case. Until then, Spot withdrawals offered encouragement without confirming a recovery.
Final Summary Ethena fell 12.3%, losing $0.20 support as Long Liquidations exceeded $8.2 million. ENA left exchanges during the sell-off, but withdrawals offered little certainty about who was buying.
Ethena, issuer of the $USDe synthetic dollar, has passed $1 billion in cumulative fees since late 2023, according to DefiLlama data.
Ethena, the issuer of the $USDe synthetic dollar, has generated more than $1 billion in cumulative fees, according to DefiLlama data highlighted by @BSCNews. The tracker puts the total at $1.061 billion since the protocol began generating fees.
The milestone came quickly. DefiLlama's quarterly income statement shows Ethena recorded just $84,309 in fees in the fourth quarter of 2023, before climbing to $24.28 million in the first quarter of 2024. That puts the $1 billion mark less than three years after fee generation began.
What drives Ethena's fees$USDe is a synthetic dollar rather than a conventional stablecoin. According to Upshift, it aims to hold $1 through a mix of liquid stablecoins and crypto such as $BTC and $ETH paired with short futures positions of the same size, so price moves cancel out. Ethena launched USDe on Ethereum on February 19, 2024, per Eco's explainer citing Ethena's docs.
DefiLlama's methodology counts staking rewards, yield distribution, mint fees and extra fees as fees. Most of that flows through to holders of staked USDe (sUSDe) rather than to the protocol. DefiLlama data shows Ethena generated about $17.93 million in fees over a recent 30-day period, of which only $20,551 was protocol revenue.
Supply has fallen from its peakThe cumulative figure sits alongside a smaller USDe supply. Upshift, citing DefiLlama, reports about $4.9 billion in circulation on September 23, 2026, down from a peak of $14.8 billion in October 2025. Fees depend on supply and on funding rates in perpetual futures markets, so they tend to track market conditions.
The supply level also matters for the $ENA token. Coincub reports that a governance-approved fee switch only starts routing revenue into $ENA buybacks once USDe supply reaches $7.5 billion.
SourcesDefiLlama: Ethena fees and income statement
Upshift: What is Ethena USDe
Coincub: Ethena (ENA) price prediction and fee switch
Ethena [ENA] faced rejection at $0.26 after the broader market reversed on the 4th of October.
Since then, the altcoin has remained under strong downside pressure, falling to a low of $0.21. At the time of writing, Ethena traded around $0.219, down 6.57% over the past 24 hours.
The price drop pushed ENA below its 20-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA), indicating weaker short-term momentum.
Did Ethena’s team sell into the decline? Despite ENA’s continued decline, reported team activity raised concerns about further selling. X user Nazoku alleged that the Ethena team sold $3.45 million worth of ENA on OKX.
Source: X It also described an earlier transfer of nearly 400 million tokens from a team wallet to a proxy contract. That transfer reportedly occurred five days before the post. Nazoku said tokens later passed through an intermediary wallet before sales on OKX.
Usually, projects sell tokens for various reasons, including funding operational costs. The reason for the reported sale remained unclear.
However, team selling can add supply to the market and unsettle traders, particularly when prices are already declining. Such activity could prompt other holders to take profits or reduce exposure, adding to downside pressure.
Beyond the reported team selling, Ethena [ENA] also experienced substantial protocol outflows.
According to DeFiLlama, Inflows fell to -$104.08 million on the 8th of October, indicating net capital withdrawals. Outflows had not reached these levels since July.
Source: DeFiLlama During that earlier period, ENA struggled, trading around $0.08. The latest outflows suggested that capital was leaving the protocol, although the data did not establish where it went.
Protocol withdrawals do not directly measure ENA selling. Even so, continued withdrawals could weaken confidence in the project. That left buyers facing both weaker price momentum and concerns about capital leaving Ethena.
Can ENA buyers hold the $0.20 support? ENA’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) continued declining and stood near 50.64, just above its neutral midpoint.
Source: TradingView The reading suggested that buyers’ momentum had weakened. A sustained move below 50 could further support the bearish outlook. Likewise, ENA traded below the 20-day EMA, which stood around $0.227.
If the current pressure persisted, Ethena could test the $0.20 support. Losing that level could open the door to $0.19. However, a daily close above the 20-day EMA could weaken the bearish setup and support a recovery toward $0.25.
Final Summary Ethena faced a reported $3.45 million team sale as protocol net outflows reached roughly $104 million. ENA’s weakening RSI and loss of its 20-day EMA put $0.20 support in focus.
ENA trades near $0.220 after retreating from its late-September high of approximately $0.295. Derivatives open interest has fallen 9.52% in 24 hours, indicating a reduction in outstanding leveraged exposure. A StablecoinX regulatory filing introduces a potential supply consideration, although related ENA sales have not been established. Ethena’s ENA token is under renewed selling pressure as a decline in leveraged trading activity coincides with questions about potential token supply.
At the time of writing ENA trades at $0.2202 on October 8, while broader market data showed a 7.77% decline over the preceding 24 hours. The token has surrendered part of its September rally, with a sequence of lower highs forming after its recent peak.
The correction comes as traders assess whether reduced leverage is the principal source of selling pressure or whether changes to ENA’s potential circulating supply could prolong the decline.
ENA Open Interest Contracts as Traders Reduce Exposure Derivatives data points to a substantial reduction in outstanding positions.
The market data from Coinalyze places ENA open interest at approximately $388.5 million, down 9.52% over 24 hours. Hyperliquid accounts for the largest share among the displayed exchanges, followed by Binance and Bybit.
Bar chart comparing trading volumes across major crypto exchanges, with Hyperliquid, Binance and Bybit recording the highest figures. Declining open interest alongside falling prices is consistent with traders closing positions and reducing leverage. Such conditions can emerge from long liquidations, voluntary exits or a broader reduction in speculative exposure.
Open interest alone, however, cannot identify which mechanism dominates. Confirming forced selling would require liquidation figures and additional positioning data.
Trading volume offers another perspective. ENA recorded approximately $402 million in 24-hour volume, a decline of 13.60% from the preceding period.
The combination of weaker prices, declining participation and reduced outstanding leverage suggests that traders have become more cautious following September’s advance. It does not establish that selling pressure has ended or that a sustained trend reversal is underway.
StablecoinX Filing Raises Questions About Potential ENA Supply A regulatory disclosure introduces another variable into ENA’s market outlook.
In a September filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, StablecoinX disclosed an agreement involving Ethena entities that removed certain contractual lock-up, vesting and unlocking restrictions on ENA tokens, effective October 5, 2026.
The arrangement permits potential ENA sales to finance working capital and strategic activities, subject to applicable notice and consent requirements.
While the agreement gives StablecoinX greater flexibility over its token holdings, it provides no evidence that the company sold ENA during the latest decline. Establishing a direct connection would require transaction records or subsequent disclosures.
The distinction matters because the possibility of additional circulating supply can influence market expectations even before any sales occur. Investors will therefore be watching for changes in StablecoinX’s reported holdings or confirmed transactions that could clarify whether the contractual changes translate into actual selling pressure.
ENA Technical Analysis: Support Faces a Critical Test ENA’s daily chart shows weakening momentum after its September recovery, with successive lower highs forming beneath a descending resistance line.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) has fallen toward 51, indicating that buying momentum has faded without pushing the token into oversold territory.
The immediate technical test is concentrated around $0.214, where the 50% Fibonacci retracement provides a potential support level. A sustained break below that area would expose ENA to a deeper correction toward $0.195.
ENA’s daily chart highlights weakening bullish momentum as the token approaches a key support zone following its September rally. Source: TradingView Coinbase-D Chart For buyers, the challenge is recovering the $0.233–$0.238 resistance zone, which combines a Fibonacci retracement level with the 20-day moving average.
A sustained move through that region, particularly if accompanied by improving trading participation, would weaken the recent pattern of lower highs. Until then, the chart favors caution despite ENA remaining above its medium-term moving average.
ENA Technical Levels to Watch
Daily chart | October 8, 2026 | Reference price: $0.2202
Indicator Price Market Role 20-day SMA $0.2377 Trend resistance 38.2% Fibonacci $0.2329 Recovery hurdle 50% Fibonacci $0.2139 Immediate support 61.8% Fibonacci $0.1948 Next support 50-day SMA $0.1869 Medium-term support Source: TradingView, ENA/USD daily chart.
SMA = Simple Moving Average.
Fibonacci levels calculated from the $0.1331–$0.2947 price range.
Technical levels are references, not guaranteed targets.
ENA Declines Despite Positive Ecosystem Developments ENA’s retreat has occurred alongside continued activity within the Ethena ecosystem, rather than an identifiable negative announcement about the protocol’s operations.
On October 6, Ethena announced that ether.fi would use its Whitelabel infrastructure to launch a stablecoin. The development points to continued demand for Ethena’s issuance services, but it does not establish additional buying demand for ENA.
EtherFi is launching their own stablecoin, powered by Ethena Whitelabel.
@ether_fi has >$300m of stablecoin deposits held across their platform. Reserves, mint and redeem, & compliance for @ether_fi USD will be managed end to end by Ethena.
Since launching their category-defining Cash card in 2024, they have scaled to nearly $1 billion in cumulative spend and more than 100,000 active cards.
The best stablecoin neobanks will move to own the entire stack and earn from idle deposit balances alongside their broader product suite.
— Ethena (@ethena) October 6, 2026
That distinction limits the announcement’s relevance to the current price correction. The token’s immediate weakness is more directly reflected in declining derivatives exposure and the potential supply implications of StablecoinX’s regulatory disclosure.
There is insufficient evidence to determine how much either factor contributed to the latest decline.
ENA Outlook: Three Signals That Could Shape the Next Move ENA’s near-term direction will depend on whether selling pressure eases and whether potential supply risks develop into actual market activity. Three indicators could help distinguish a temporary correction from a more sustained decline:
Derivatives stabilization: A recovery in open interest alongside stronger spot demand would suggest renewed market participation. Rising prices without comparable spot activity could indicate a less durable rebound driven by short covering. Confirmed token sales: Subsequent StablecoinX disclosures or verifiable transactions could clarify whether the revised ENA restrictions result in additional selling pressure. The agreement alone does not establish that tokens have been sold. Support and resistance confirmation: Holding the $0.214 support area would help preserve the current recovery structure, while a sustained move above $0.233–$0.238 would strengthen the case for a bullish reversal. The central uncertainty is whether ENA’s weakness primarily reflects traders reducing exposure or a broader reassessment of potential token supply. Until clearer evidence emerges, the technical recovery remains vulnerable to renewed selling pressure.
Alexander Zdravkov is a crypto journalist and market analyst specializing in digital assets, blockchain technology, and the rapidly evolving cryptocurrency market. He entered the industry more than four years ago, drawn to the speed of innovation in crypto and the potential of blockchain-based financial systems to reshape traditional markets. His work focuses on understanding the forces behind crypto market movements, from Bitcoin and altcoin cycles to institutional adoption, regulation, exchange-traded products, stablecoins, DeFi, and emerging blockchain ecosystems. Rather than simply following price action, Alexander looks at liquidity, investor positioning, market structure, and macroeconomic conditions to identify developing trends and explain what they could mean for digital assets. With a degree in International Relations, he brings a broader perspective to cryptocurrency coverage by connecting developments in the sector with monetary policy, geopolitics, regulation, and global capital flows. This allows him to examine crypto not as an isolated market, but as an increasingly interconnected part of the global financial system. Over the course of more than five years in financial journalism, Alexander has written over 5,000 articles covering cryptocurrencies, blockchain, traditional markets, and the global economy. His reporting spans Bitcoin, Ethereum and altcoins, DeFi protocols, institutional crypto adoption, regulation, market infrastructure, security incidents, and major developments shaping the wider digital asset industry. His approach is centered on giving readers context behind the numbers and headlines, explaining not only what is happening in crypto markets, but why it matters and what could come next.
Ether.fi spouští dolarový stablecoin ether.fi USD na white-label platformě Ethena, která bude spravovat rezervy, emisi, odkupy i dodržování předpisů. Krytí tokenu zatím nebylo zveřejněno.
Ether.fi is launching its own US dollar stablecoin, ether.fi USD, on Ethena's white-label stablecoin service, the two companies announced on Tuesday. Ethena will manage reserves, minting, redemptions and compliance end to end, while ether.fi owns the brand and the distribution.
The token gives ether.fi a way to earn on money already sitting in its products. The protocol, which built its business on liquid restaking, holds more than $300 million in stablecoin deposits across its platform, and its Cash card has processed around $1 billion in cumulative spend across more than 100,000 active cards since launching in 2024, according to ether.fi. Ethena framed the pitch plainly: "The best stablecoin neobanks will move to own the entire stack and earn from idle deposit balances alongside their broader product suite."
Neither company has said when ether.fi USD will go live, which chains it will run on, how revenue will be split, or what will back it. The backing is the detail that matters most. Ethena's white-label product lets issuers back their token with USDe, Ethena's synthetic dollar, which holds spot crypto against short perpetual futures positions and earns from staking and funding rates. Issuers can also use USDtb, a token issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and backed by traditional reserve assets in a structure Ethena describes as GENIUS Act-compliant, or other stablecoins. A card balance backed by USDe would carry funding-rate and derivatives-venue exposure that a Treasury-backed token would not, and ether.fi users have no way yet of knowing which they will hold.
Ether.fi joins Jupiter, MegaETH and Sui on Ethena's white-label platform, which issues JupUSD, USDm and suiUSDe respectively. For Ethena, the white-label business is a way to grow distribution at a time when its flagship product has contracted. USDe has a market capitalisation of about $4.96 billion, according to CoinGecko, roughly a third of the nearly $15 billion it reached in October 2025.
Ether.fi is following a pattern set by payments apps, exchanges and DeFi protocols that have moved to issue their own dollars so they can retain reserve income they would otherwise pass to Tether or Circle. The points to watch are the backing disclosure and whether ether.fi moves existing Cash card balances into its own token by default once it launches.
Zakladatel Ethena Guy Young tvrdí, že výnos není komoditou, protože produkty se stejným výnosem nesou různá rizika a vyžadují rozdílnou míru důvěry v řízení rizik.
Two products can pay the same yield and still carry very different risks. That was the core argument Ethena Labs founder and CEO Guy Young brought to TOKEN2049 in Singapore.
Young said yield is not commoditized, because trust in how each operator manages risk varies widely.
What Young argued, and why Ethena is the one arguing it TOKEN2049 Singapore ran October 7-8, 2026. Young used his panel appearance to push back on a popular idea: that yield in crypto is a race to the bottom, where users simply chase the highest number.
Ethena’s flagship products make this argument personal. The protocol issues USDe, a synthetic dollar, and sUSDe, a version of it that earns yield.
The mechanics run on what’s called a delta-neutral strategy. Ethena holds staked crypto assets and simultaneously opens short positions in perpetual futures, a type of derivative contract with no expiry date.
Stripped down: if the underlying asset’s price rises, the staked holdings gain and the short loses, and vice versa. The two sides roughly cancel out, leaving the position stable in dollar terms while collecting staking rewards and funding payments.
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The risks Ethena has to manage The biggest one is counterparty exposure. Because those short positions live on centralized exchanges, Ethena depends on those venues staying solvent and operational.
Historically, approximately 48-50% of Ethena’s exchange counterparty exposure has been concentrated on Binance.
Ethena also maintains an insurance fund that backs its operations. The fund is meant to absorb shocks, such as stretches when funding rates on perpetual futures turn negative and the short side starts costing money instead of earning it.
On the operational side, the company has completed a SOC 2 Type II audit, an independent review of whether a company’s internal controls actually work over time, not just on paper.
A bumpy road to this argument USDe supply peaked near $15B before contracting sharply following stress events in late 2025.
Regulators have also weighed in. In 2025, Germany’s financial watchdog BaFin issued a wind-down order for Ethena’s German entity.
Since then, the company has been busy reshaping its business. It secured a $1B credit facility with FalconX in 2026.
Ethena has also expanded into tokenized US equities through Binance bStocks, and moved into equity perpetuals with Binance as of September 2026. It has integrated onto the TRON blockchain as well.
Meanwhile, token incentives tied to USDe growth were set to end by late September 2026.
What this means for the yield market The institutional angle is where this gets real. Larger allocators typically care less about squeezing out an extra point of yield and more about whether the operator can document its controls. A completed SOC 2 Type II audit and a $1B credit facility are the kinds of credentials that speak to that audience.
Still, Ethena’s own profile shows the limits of the argument. Concentration of roughly half its exchange exposure on Binance is the sort of risk that a trust-focused investor would scrutinize closely, especially as the company deepens its partnership with that same exchange through equity products.
Things to watch from here: whether USDe supply recovers now that growth incentives have wound down, whether Ethena diversifies its exchange counterparty exposure, and how the equity products perform under real market stress.
Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
MetaMask preventivně ukončil část stakingu přes Lido kvůli bezpečnostnímu incidentu v infrastruktuře. Společnost uvedla, že pro peněženky MetaMask nevidí žádnou okamžitou hrozbu.
Ethereum-based wallet provider MetaMask has proactively exited non-custodial staking operations.
In a statement on the 1st of October, the firm said it was responding to a “security incident” that impacted part of its infrastructure. But it did not share more details on the nature or scope of the impact.
However, the firm assured that it has “identified no immediate threat to MetaMask wallets.”
Source: X Separately, Lido, one of the MetaMask partners, confirmed the validator exit and projected that the exercise could end by the 7th of October. The Lido staking provider assured that the incident does not affect users or their operations.
Lido Protocol’s diverse Node Operator set and other security systems, including the ad hoc reserve fund (of over 6,750 stETH), are designed to contain and mitigate disruptions.
Normal resumption of operations by MetaMask staking is expected in the next 45 days due to a long validator entry queue. It’s worth noting that Lido controls 29% of staked ETH, but the amount staked by MetaMask alone isn’t publicly disclosed.
Will MetaMask contain the DeFi contagion risk? Following the update, on-chain data showed that Joseph Lubin, founder of ConsenSys, the firm behind MetaMask, moved 133K ETH. It’s unclear whether it was tied to the incident.
Speaking on the MetaMask incident, Stani Kulechov, Aave CEO, clarified that the lending protocol was not facing any contagion risk.
We’re keeping an eye on this situation alongside Lido. No impact to Aave markets, and everything is operating normally.
For his part, Guy Young, founder of Ethena, assured USDe investors that there was no risk exposure to Lido assets.
We are aware of the situation. USDe backing assets do not currently include any direct exposure to stETH or any other liquid staking tokens. No expected impact on Ethena.
In other words, the incident may not affect MetaMask wallets, but it could be far-reaching. In fact, security analysts compared the compromise to last year’s Kiln incident that affected back-end node infrastructure.
Kiln was forced to take its validators offline to contain the risk but suffered a $41M loss.
Crypto hacks have surged in 2026. It remains to be seen whether MetaMask’s precaution of taking its validators offline will help minimize a potential full-blown contagion risk.
That said, MetaMask has evolved into an integrated wallet offering staking, perps trading, prediction markets, tokenized securities trading, and more. Its perps volume has increased by 2x to $1.6B in Q3.
Source: DeFiLlama Final Summary MetaMask has taken some of its validators offline to contain an infrastructure security risk. Aave, Ethena, and Lido have assured that user funds are safe and that private keys weren’t compromised.
Standard Chartered zahájila pokrytí ENA s cílovou cenou 2 USD na konec roku 2028, což je zhruba osminásobek tehdejší ceny kolem 0,25 USD. Banka sází na růst USDe, tokenizaci a plánované odkupy ENA z výnosů Ethena.
Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Ethena’s ENA token with a $2 price target for the end of 2028, putting the bank’s first published valuation at roughly eight times the token’s current market price.
Summary
Standard Chartered initiated ENA coverage with a $2 price target for the end of 2028, implying roughly 700% upside from its Sept. 30 price near $0.25. Ethena’s exposure to stablecoins, perpetual futures and tokenized assets forms the core of the bank’s valuation case. USDe has expanded beyond crypto funding rates into institutional credit, tokenized equities and traditional credit assets. Standard Chartered expects recurring ENA buybacks tied to Ethena revenue to give the token greater exposure to growth across its businesses. Standard Chartered Global Research said on Sept. 30 that Ethena’s exposure to stablecoins, perpetual futures and tokenization underpins its outlook, while a newly introduced ENA buyback program could allow the token to benefit as those markets grow.
ENA traded near $0.25 on Sept. 30, leaving the cryptocurrency roughly 87% below Standard Chartered’s target. A move to $2 would translate into gains of approximately 700% from that level.
Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, authored the report and described Ethena as a “scalable yield-bearing stablecoin.” The bank focused much of its investment case on the growth of USDe and the changing mix of assets used to generate returns for the synthetic dollar.
Standard Chartered expects ENA to benefit from three markets Ethena sits at the intersection of perpetual futures, tokenization and stablecoins, according to Standard Chartered, giving the protocol exposure to three areas the bank expects to grow over the coming years.
USDe remains central to the thesis. Standard Chartered said the synthetic dollar popularized yield-bearing stablecoins after its late 2023 launch and became the fastest stablecoin to reach a $10 billion market capitalization.
Yield-bearing stablecoins currently account for roughly 5% of the stablecoin market, the bank estimated. Standard Chartered expects their share to grow as users seek yield alongside the functions already provided by dollar-linked tokens.
USDe originally generated much of its yield through the crypto basis trade, where Ethena held spot assets while using short perpetual futures positions to hedge price exposure. Standard Chartered said the strategy generated yields above 20% at times.
Ethena has since moved part of USDe’s backing into other sources of returns, reducing its dependence on crypto funding rates.
One part of that strategy involves institutional credit. Ethena and FalconX launched a $1 billion lending facility in August that allows assets backing USDe to finance secured and overcollateralized loans for institutional borrowers.
FalconX originates and services the loans through a special purpose vehicle, while qualified custodians hold collateral worth more than the outstanding loans. Under the structure, institutional lending represented approximately $310 million, or 6.9%, of USDe backing in early July.
Ethena takes the USDe basis trade into equities Ethena’s expansion beyond cryptocurrency markets forms another part of Standard Chartered’s case as the protocol looks for more places to deploy the strategy behind USDe.
As crypto.news previously reported, Ethena recently expanded its basis trade into tokenized U.S. equities and equity perpetual futures after its Risk Committee approved the framework.
Under the structure, Binance bStocks provide tokenized spot exposure while equity perpetual futures are used for the offsetting position. Binance had more than $2.9 billion in equity perpetual open interest when the plan was announced, while the equity basis had averaged 3.56% annualized over the previous six months.
Ethena Labs founder Guy Young described the move as the “most significant expansion of USDe’s funding mechanism since we started.”
The strategy gives Ethena another market in which it can run the basis trade that originally supported USDe. Ethena expects the opportunity in equity perpetuals to eventually become significantly larger than the corresponding crypto perpetual market.
Standard Chartered tied the expansion to a much larger forecast for tokenized assets. Its research expects real world assets deployed on blockchains to grow from around $40 billion today to $2 trillion by the end of 2028.
Ethena has already started allocating capital toward that market. In June, the company planned a $250 million allocation to Securitize’s tokenized AAA rated collateralized loan obligation fund as the product expanded to Solana.
The fund invests in U.S. dollar denominated AAA rated CLO tranches from primary and secondary markets, with BNY serving as custodian and sub adviser.
ENA buybacks support Standard Chartered’s price case Changes to ENA’s token economics make up another part of Standard Chartered’s $2 forecast.
Ethena proposed in August that 95% of net revenue generated by its branded businesses be directed toward recurring ENA buybacks once USDe supply reaches a series of predetermined thresholds.
The first threshold is set at $7.5 billion of USDe supply. Unlike an earlier $260 million buyback program that relied on a fixed pool of capital, the proposed structure would connect ENA purchases to recurring net revenue generated by Ethena businesses.
Changes are being made to the token’s supply schedule at the same time. Under the revised ENA arrangements, the Ethena Foundation purchased locked tokens from some large seed investors that had been selling ENA and planned to accelerate the remaining unlocks for original investors.
The changes would bring monthly releases for those investors to an end, while tokens allocated to the Ethena team remain under their existing vesting schedules.
USDe supply will determine when the proposed revenue based purchases begin. The stablecoin remained below $5 billion when the proposal was announced in August after its supply had previously reached a peak near $15 billion.
Institutional infrastructure around ENA has been developing alongside the changes to its token economics. CME Group introduced ENA reference rates in August covering London, New York and Asia Pacific market closes.
CF Benchmarks calculates the rates using transactions from eligible spot exchanges. Published every day, including weekends and holidays, the benchmarks can be used for portfolio valuation, risk management and financial products linked to ENA.
USDe backing has moved beyond crypto funding rates Ethena’s efforts to find more sources of yield have gradually changed the composition of the assets supporting USDe.
The FalconX facility gave Ethena a route into institutional credit, while the tokenized equity strategy opened another market for its delta neutral trading model. Its planned allocation to tokenized CLOs added exposure to traditional credit markets through blockchain based assets.
USDe’s expansion into new backing strategies has coincided with efforts to give the stablecoin more uses outside trading. Ethena launched the Ethena Pay beta in September, combining self custodial USDe balances with payments and annual reward rates of up to 6%.
Access initially opened to 400 users across eligible markets. Standard membership is free, while higher membership levels require users to lock specified amounts of ENA or meet referral requirements.
Ethena Pay Ltd. states that it is not a bank and that balances are not covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or another government backed deposit insurance program.
ENA’s market performance has meanwhile responded to developments around USDe. The token gained 54.1% over the seven days through Sept. 26 as Ethena’s move into tokenized stocks and equity perpetuals drew market attention.
During that move, ENA traded around $0.2756 on Sept. 26 after reaching $0.2807, with the token sitting above its 20 day, 50 day, 100 day and 200 day moving averages.
Standard Chartered expects real world assets deployed on blockchains to grow from around $40 billion to $2 trillion by the end of 2028, the same timeframe covered by Kendrick’s $2 ENA price forecast.
Ethena oznámila partnerství s Binance, které rozšiřuje její strategii basis trade do equity perpetuals. Zároveň se řeší návrh, jenž by mohl nasměrovat až 95 % čistých příjmů protokolu na buybacky ENA.
TLDR: ENA rallied 277% from its July low, trading above key moving averages near $0.30 resistance. Roughly $90 million in ENA was newly staked, pushing total locked supply near $1.26 billion. Ethena partners with Binance to extend its basis trade strategy into equity perpetuals markets. A new governance proposal could direct up to 95% of protocol revenue toward ENA buybacks. Ethena’s ENA token climbed to $0.269, marking a 277% increase from its July 1 low of $0.071. The token trades above both its 7-day and 30-day moving averages, a bullish technical signal.
ENA gained 31.6% over the past week alone. Stablecoin market capitalization tied to the protocol rose by $35.8 million in a single day. Traders now watch the $0.30 resistance level as a potential turning point for Ethena’s next price move.
Staking Growth Signals Rising Confidence in ENA Roughly $90 million worth of ENA was newly staked over the recent period, according to data shared by 10x Research. This pushed the total locked supply of the token to nearly $1.26 billion.
ENA is at $0.269, up 277% from its $0.071 low on Jul 1.
What is going on?
*** Ethena (ENA-USDT is above the 7-day moving average -> bullish, and is above the 30-day moving average -> bullish, with 1 week change of +31.6%)
*** Adding $35.8 million in stablecoin market cap in a… pic.twitter.com/vIifRa7XHl
— 10x Research (@10xResearch) September 26, 2026
The increase in staked supply suggests holders are choosing to lock tokens rather than sell into the rally. A growing staked base can reduce circulating supply available for trading. This dynamic often supports price stability during periods of heightened volatility.
Binance Wallet also introduced a new incentive tied to Ethena’s stablecoin, USDe. Through its Hold to Earn program, users can now access up to 4.75% annual percentage yield simply by holding USDe.
The offering gives everyday Binance users a direct incentive to hold the stablecoin. This expands USDe distribution beyond DeFi-native audiences into the broader retail base.
Separately, Ethena’s community is reviewing a major governance proposal. The proposal calls for a fee switch that would direct up to 95% of net protocol revenues toward ENA token buybacks.
If approved, the mechanism would tie protocol earnings more directly to token holders. Buyback programs of this kind have historically supported token valuations across the sector.
Binance Partnership Expands Collateral Reach for USDe Ethena announced a partnership with Binance to extend its basis trade strategy into equity perpetuals. The move represents one of the biggest updates to USDe’s collateral backing since the stablecoin launched.
Ethena stated the partnership expands its addressable collateral market from roughly $2.5 trillion in crypto assets to more than $150 trillion in real-world assets. This shift opens the door to a substantially larger pool of backing assets.
Ethena is partnering with @Binance as our first venue for the extension of the basis trade into equity perpetuals, one of the most exciting updates to the USDe collateral backing since launch.
This expands the addressable market of underlying collateral from $2.5 trillion of… pic.twitter.com/be4Mz7XHk1
— Ethena (@ethena) September 25, 2026
Under the arrangement, bStocks will function as tokenized spot collateral. These positions will be hedged using Binance’s USDT-denominated equity perpetual contracts.
Ethena described this as the same delta-neutral structure it has used across crypto assets since inception. Binance is also providing lower auto-deleveraging priority for eligible delta-neutral accounts, including Ethena’s own positions, adding a layer of risk mitigation for USDe holders.
Binance’s equity basis has averaged more than 11% annualized over the past six months. Open interest in that market has grown by roughly 30% per month over the last three months.
Ethena expects the equity perpetuals opportunity to eventually surpass the $15 billion in crypto perpetuals it captured during the previous market cycle. Allocations under the new partnership began immediately following the announcement.
Analysts Eye $0.30 as the Next Key Price Level Independent analyst Giannis Andreou described $0.30 as a decisive level for ENA’s next directional move. The token was trading just below that resistance following its recent rally.
Andreou noted that a confirmed break and hold above $0.30 would strengthen the bullish case for further gains. He pointed to $0.36 as the next potential target if that breakout materializes.
🟣 $ENA IS AT A MAJOR DECISION POINT$ENA is now trading right below the $0.30 resistance after a strong move higher.
For me, this level decides the next big move.
If ENA breaks $0.30 and holds above it, I see a higher-probability path toward $0.36 first, with room for much… pic.twitter.com/BzKY7QK79a
— Giannis Andreou (@gandreou007) September 26, 2026
Andreou placed roughly 70% probability on the bullish breakout scenario continuing to play out. He said momentum could carry ENA well beyond the $0.36 mark if buying pressure persists. Sustained volume above resistance would likely be needed to confirm this path.
On the other hand, Andreou assigned about 30% probability to a deeper correction. He identified $0.263 as the key support level to watch on the downside.
A drop below that threshold would weaken the current setup and open room for a more pronounced pullback in ENA’s price.
Podle Token Unlocks čekají příští týden velké unlocky u 2Z, SUI a ENA. Největší je 2Z, který uvolní asi 1,66 miliardy tokenů, tedy zhruba 47,69 % cirkulující nabídky, v hodnotě zhruba 114 milionů USD.
PANews reported on September 27 that, according to Token Unlocks data, tokens such as 2Z, SUI and ENA will see major unlocks next week, including:
DoubleZero (2Z) will unlock about 1.66 billion tokens at 9:00 pm Beijing time on October 2, representing about 47.69% of the circulating supply and worth about $114 million;
Sui (SUI) will unlock about 13.26 million tokens at 8:00 am Beijing time on October 1, representing about 0.32% of the circulating supply and worth about $16.7 million;
Ethena (ENA) will unlock about 40.63 million tokens at 3:00 pm Beijing time on October 2, representing about 0.45% of the circulating supply and worth about $11 million;
Kamino (KMNO) will unlock about 229 million tokens at 8:00 pm Beijing time on September 30, representing about 2.81% of the circulating supply and worth about $10.8 million;
Collector Crypt (CARDS) will unlock about 59.26 million tokens at 3:00 am Beijing time on September 30, representing about 10.62% of the circulating supply and worth about $10.7 million;
EigenCloud (EIGEN) will unlock about 36.82 million tokens at 12:00 pm Beijing time on October 1, representing about 5.19% of the circulating supply and worth about $10.3 million;
Falcon Finance (FF) will unlock about 77.14 million tokens at 9:00 pm Beijing time on September 29, representing about 2.51% of the circulating supply and worth about $10.2 million.
Ethena ukončuje ENA pobídky pro stakující USDe; od tohoto měsíce klesnou na nulu po zhruba 85% snížení od roku 2024. Projekt už od spuštění rozdělil přes 750 milionů dolarů na odměnách.
Ethena is pulling the plug on ENA token incentives for USDe stakers, marking the end of a rewards program that once powered one of crypto’s fastest-growing stablecoin experiments. The incentives have been cut by roughly 85% since 2024, and after this month, they drop to zero.
The incentive era winds down Ethena’s synthetic dollar, USDe, rode a wave of generous ENA token emissions to scale rapidly. The protocol has distributed over $750 million in total rewards to users since launch, a staggering sum that helped USDe’s circulating supply balloon to approximately $15 billion at its peak in October 2025.
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USDe’s supply has since contracted by more than 65%, falling below $5 billion as of late August 2026. The 85% reduction in discretionary ENA rewards tracked a cooling funding-rate environment, the very mechanism that generates yield for USDe holders. When perpetual futures funding rates run hot, Ethena’s delta-neutral strategy prints money. When they cool off, the economics get tighter, and subsidizing growth with token emissions becomes harder to justify.
Governance gets a makeover The Ethena Foundation terminated recurring ENA investor unlocks as of October 5, 2026, completing a buyout of locked ENA.
A governance proposal approved in September 2026 ties ENA buybacks directly to USDe supply milestones, with the first threshold set at $7.5 billion. If USDe’s circulating supply climbs back above that level, 95% of the protocol’s net revenue gets channeled into buying ENA off the open market.
The sustainability question Ethena has shifted its strategic priorities toward institutional credit products and white-label stablecoin offerings. USDe lost more than two-thirds of its supply as incentives dried up, falling from roughly $15 billion to below $5 billion. Rebuilding from below $5 billion to the $7.5 billion threshold needed to trigger buybacks requires organic growth in an environment where funding rates aren’t cooperating.
The $750 million already spent on rewards represents a significant customer acquisition cost. The buyback mechanism ties ENA buybacks to USDe supply performance rather than continuous token emissions, meaning ENA holders are making a bet on USDe’s ability to recapture lost ground.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Bitcoin has gained about 3.8% over seven days as U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have drawn $2.39 billion this week, while Quant, Ethena and Bitway have led the 100 largest crypto assets by weekly price gain.
Summary
Quant rose 61.8% after The Clearing House selected it for a U.S. tokenized-deposit network. Ethena gained 54.1% as it expanded USDe’s backing strategy into tokenized stocks and equity futures. Bitway climbed 48.0%, although a sharp daily reversal put its weekly advance under pressure. Bitcoin held near $84,000 after reaching an eight-month high above $87,000 earlier in the week. According to CoinGecko, Bitcoin traded near $84,077 on Sep. 26, and the total crypto market value stood near $2.98 trillion. Quant (QNT) ranked first among the top 100 seven-day gainers at 61.8%, followed by Ethena (ENA) at 54.1% and Bitway (BTW) at 48.0%. The rankings use rolling seven-day price changes, so the figures can change during the weekend.
Bitcoin ETF inflows set the market backdrop U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows on all five trading days from Sep. 21 through Sep. 25, according to Farside Investors. The funds drew $999 million on Monday and $714.7 million on Tuesday, followed by $346.9 million, $190.7 million and $134.5 million over the next three sessions. Combined inflows reached about $2.39 billion.
Bitcoin reached $87,392 on Sep. 21 before retreating toward $84,000. In a report on ETF demand published Sep. 24, crypto.news quoted BTCS S.A. strategy adviser Wojciech Kaszycki, who said cash entering spot funds supported the initial price rise while futures positions also increased. He put the next major test near $90,000 if buying continued.
CoinGecko’s seven-day figures showed a much larger move in the three leading tokens than in Bitcoin. Each also had a separate development or trading pattern behind its advance, leaving different price levels in focus for the coming week.
Quant tests $106 after clearing $100 Quant traded near $104.48 in the CoinGecko snapshot, giving it the strongest seven-day return among the 100 largest assets. On Sep. 24, The Clearing House announced that it had selected Quant to power its On-Chain Money Initiative in the United States.
Quant will provide technology to connect banks and coordinate the clearing and settlement of tokenized-deposit transactions. The Clearing House said the network will also connect with payment systems already used by financial institutions, including RTP and CHIPS. It expects the service to become available to participating banks in the first half of 2027.
The U.S. selection follows Quant’s work on a separate British bank project. On Sep. 24, six UK institutions completed live customer transactions through the Great British Tokenised Deposit initiative, which Quant supported alongside EY and Linklaters. The British project tested payments involving customers at different banks.
On the TradingView daily chart, QNT rose through the Murrey Math $100 level and traded around $104.57. Its Average Directional Index stood at 39.13, indicating a strong trend after the steep advance. Price reached $108 during the session before easing below the chart’s $106.25 overshoot level.
Quant price daily chart — Sep. 26 | Source: TradingView A move back above $106.25 would put $112.50 in focus, followed by $118.75 if buyers sustain the advance. If QNT falls below $100, the breakout would face a more demanding test at $93.75, the next marked level on the daily chart.
Ethena approaches $0.28 with RSI near 80 Ethena’s ENA traded near $0.2781 on CoinGecko after gaining 54.1% over seven days. On Sep. 25, the protocol said it would add tokenized U.S. stocks and corresponding equity perpetual futures on Binance to part of the strategy used to back its USDe synthetic dollar.
As reported on Sep. 25, Ethena plans to hold Binance bStocks for stock exposure and take offsetting positions in equity perpetuals. Ethena said Binance’s equity perpetual market had more than $2.9 billion in open interest. The stock-linked positions add another market for a strategy the protocol has also used with crypto assets.
Ethena Labs founder Guy Young called it “the most significant expansion of USDe’s funding mechanism since we started.” The company said its Risk Committee had approved a framework for the stock-based trades.
The strategy involves tokenized U.S. equities, but Binance’s bStocks offering is available to eligible users where permitted by local law. Binance’s original bStocks launch included tokens linked to Nvidia, Tesla, Circle, Micron, and Sandisk shares. The tokens provide stock-linked exposure without the voting rights held by direct shareholders.
On the TradingView daily chart, ENA traded around $0.2756 after touching $0.2807. Price stood above its 20-day moving average at $0.1808, its 50-day average at $0.1491, its 100-day average at $0.1160, and its 200-day average at $0.1082. Daily RSI reached 79.85, above the commonly watched 70 level.
Ethena price daily chart — Sep. 26 | Source: TradingView A move above $0.2807 would extend the latest breakout. The day’s $0.2632 low is the first level to watch on a pullback; below it, the earlier $0.22–$0.23 trading area would come back into view. Ethena’s fee-switch proposal links future ENA buybacks to USDe supply thresholds, starting at $7.5 billion, rather than providing an immediate buyback at the supply level cited in the proposal.
Bitway’s reversal puts $0.76 in focus Bitway traded near $0.9032 on CoinGecko, up 48.0% for the rolling seven-day period. Its daily TradingView chart showed a much sharper move within that window: BTW reached $1.3661 before falling to about $0.9033, with the session’s low at $0.7620.
Earlier in the week, on-chain analyst Ai Yi reported that a new address withdrew 5 million BTW, worth about $3.71 million at the time, from Gate. Other reports of the analyst’s findings put the combined withdrawals by three new addresses at 15 million BTW within three hours. The transfers occurred during the rally, but the transactions alone do not establish who controlled the wallets or why BTW’s price rose.
Bitway also has a staking program running from Sep. 1 to Oct. 1, with an 8% stated annual rate on USDT and an additional 3% offered in BW Points. Its earlier incentive programs were covered in an August Bitway price report after the token rose sharply that month.
The latest daily candle leaves BTW below the Bollinger upper band near $1.1513 but above its middle band near $0.7121. Regaining $1.00 and then $1.1513 would bring the $1.30–$1.37 area back into focus. A fall through the $0.7620 daily low would put the $0.7121 middle band next on the chart.
Bitway price daily chart — Sep. 26 | Source: TradingView Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Ethena rozšiřuje zajištění USDe o tokenizované americké akcie a equity perpetual futures na Binance. Firma to označila za nejvýznamnější expanzi financovacího mechanismu USDe od spuštění.
Ethena (ENA) is adding tokenized U.S. equities and equity perpetual futures on Binance to the basis trade underlying its USDe (USDe) synthetic dollar backing allocation, extending the strategy into equities.
According to a statement shared exclusively with The Block, Ethena will use bStocks as tokenized spot collateral and Binance equity perpetuals for the hedge. The Ethena Risk Committee previously approved a framework for adding tokenized equity basis trades to its allocation strategy. bStocks represent an interest in securities held by their issuer, BTech Holdings Limited, and can be converted to the underlying securities on Binance, subject to applicable laws.
Ethena has previously run the delta-neutral strategy across crypto assets, using derivatives positions to hedge the exposure. Binance added USDe across its platform last year, including as collateral for futures and perpetuals trading.
Over time, Ethena said it expects the equity perpetual opportunity to significantly exceed the crypto perpetual market.
"This is the most significant expansion of USDe's funding mechanism since we started," Ethena Labs founder Guy Young said. "Equities trade in the hundreds of trillions of dollars globally, and as more of that market moves onchain, we see a substantial opportunity to continue diversifying our backing strategy."
USDe supply currently stands at about $4.9 billion, according to The Block's data dashboard.
Total stablecoin supply. Image: The Block. Equity markets enter Ethena's basis trade Binance has more than $2.9 billion in open interest across equity perpetual futures, according to data provided by Ethena, growing at a compound monthly rate of 105% this year, while the equity basis has averaged 3.56% annualized over the past six months.
"Binance's bStocks and equity perpetuals are seeing increased adoption as their liquidity and use case grows," Binance Head of Exchange and Trading Shunyet Jan said. "Ethena runs one of the largest systematic strategies in digital assets, and their expansion into tokenized securities and equity perps is a clear sign of how the convergence of crypto and traditional assets will surface new opportunities."
Binance previously opened trading in more than 7,000 U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs to eligible users outside the U.S. in June. It subsequently rolled out bStocks later the same month. Binance's TradFi perpetual futures generated about $433.4 billion in volume in August, with equity-linked contracts accounting for roughly $342.9 billion, The Block previously reported.
USDe na Binance krátce spadl až na 0,65 USD, zatímco na DeFi platformách zůstal téměř u pegu. Ethena uvedla, že protokol během 24 hodin zpracoval přes 2 miliardy USD ve vykoupeních.
Ethena’s USDe, one of the largest synthetic dollar tokens in crypto, experienced a jarring price dislocation on Binance that saw it trade as low as $0.65 before snapping back toward its $1 peg. On DeFi platforms like Curve and Uniswap, the same token barely budged, with deviations under 0.3%.
What actually happened During a broad market sell-off on October 10-11, 2025, USDe’s price on Binance cratered far below its intended dollar peg. The token hit roughly $0.65 on Binance and approximately $0.92 on Bybit, while major decentralized exchanges showed almost no stress at all.
The culprit appears to have been a combination of factors unique to Binance. A thin internal orderbook distorted oracle pricing, and issues with deposits and withdrawals on the platform prevented arbitrageurs from doing what they normally do: buy cheap on one venue, redeem at par, and pocket the difference.
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Ethena Labs and multiple traders pointed to Binance’s operational setup as the root cause. The protocol’s own mint and redeem functions kept humming along throughout the episode, processing over $2 billion in redemptions within a 24-hour window.
The numbers in context USDe’s total supply exceeded $12 billion at the time of the incident, having peaked near or above $14 billion due to heavy accumulation driven by prior reward programs on Binance. On Curve, USDe’s price deviation stayed under 0.3%. Uniswap and Fluid showed similar stability.
Ethena responded by publishing an emergency Proof of Reserves report showing the protocol was overcollateralized by approximately $66 million.
The broader market context made things worse. The sell-off triggered approximately $19 billion in liquidations across the crypto market.
Why the venue matters more than the token When Binance’s USDe orderbook was thin and arbitrage pathways were blocked, the price shown on Binance stopped reflecting USDe’s actual redeemable value. DeFi protocols that rely on oracle feeds aggregated from multiple sources were largely insulated. Protocols that leaned heavily on Binance’s price data were not.
For USDe holders specifically, the protocol itself performed well under pressure, processing billions in redemptions without breaking. Anyone who held USDe on Binance and got liquidated during the flash crash experienced very real losses, regardless of how healthy the underlying protocol was.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
USDe na Binance krátce spadl na 0,9202 USDT a během několika minut se vrátil na 0,9996 USDT. Šlo o lokální výkyv na spotovém trhu, nikoli o potvrzený problém protokolu.
Ethena’s synthetic dollar USDe briefly printed $0.9202 on Binance’s USDE/USDT spot pair on September 22, 2026.
The wick happened at roughly 1 p.m. Beijing time. It snapped back to near $0.9996 within minutes.
That is an 8% gap, brief, yes, but loud enough to revive questions about USDe depeg risk for a token sitting on a $4.9 billion float and increasingly used as institutional-grade collateral.
What the Tape Actually Shows The flash wick was called out in real time on X by Wu Blockchain, the first English-language report of the event.
Ethena’s USDe Briefly Plunges to $0.92 on Binance Before Rapid Recovery
Ethena’s synthetic dollar USDe briefly fell as low as 0.9202 USDT on Binance’s USDE/USDT spot pair at around 1 p.m. on Sept. 22 before quickly recovering to about 0.9996 USDT.
The move came shortly before… pic.twitter.com/POaWv1LD2T
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 22, 2026
Chinese crypto accounts had flagged the move seconds earlier, timestamping the low at around 13:04 Beijing (05:04 UTC).
Trading on Binance spot and futures stayed open throughout. Only wallet deposits and withdrawals were paused, and that freeze did not begin until 06:00 UTC / 14:00 CST, roughly an hour after the wick.
Wu was explicit: there is no confirmed link between the price wick and Binance’s scheduled wallet maintenance.
Binance had announced the infrastructure upgrade on X on September 16, stating funds were safe and spot markets would remain live.
Binance will undergo a system upgrade on September 22, 2026, from 06:00 to 09:00 UTC (estimated duration: 3 hours).
Your funds remain safe, and core services such as Spot and Futures trading will not be affected.
More info → https://t.co/TkzvB7G1w7 pic.twitter.com/9EokGXloIZ
— Binance (@binance) September 16, 2026
That timeline matters. The wick landed before the freeze, not because of it. Still, the combination of thinning liquidity ahead of a known transfer halt and residual memory of the October 10, 2025 crash is enough to explain why traders reacted.
That prior incident is the reference point every USDe holder will pull. As Binance compensation after the 2025 USDe depeg shows, the exchange paid out after USDe fell to ~$0.65 on Binance spot during last year’s Black Friday crash, while on-chain pools barely moved.
The same venue-risk dynamic is on the table today. Global aggregators still showed USDe near $0.999 after Tuesday’s snap-back, confirming this was a local order-book event, not a protocol failure, at least as of writing.
Why the Stakes Are Higher Now Than in 2025 This is not the same USDe that depegged in October 2025. Ethena has spent the year since pushing it well beyond DeFi.
Ethena’s synthetic-dollar design was built on delta-hedged positions across derivative venues, not cash reserves. That structure held in 2025. But the distribution layer around it has changed significantly.
Ethena’s neobank arm is now live. The Ethena Pay neobank rollout brought USDe to retail balances across 48 countries, treating it as an everyday dollar substitute.
On the institutional side, BlackRock’s Aladdin integration of USDe and the $1 billion FalconX facility for USDe backing assets both went live in 2026.
An 8% CEX wick does not automatically break any of those integrations. But it does reprice the question of what happens to collateral and margin books if a single-venue dislocation catches leveraged positions off guard.
Competition is also closing in. Circle’s bitcoin-backed USDC loans and banks’ planned USD stablecoin from Goldman Sachs, Citi, and BofA give institutions alternatives with a very different risk profile. A wick like Tuesday’s keeps those conversations alive.
Ethena schválila fee switch, který směruje 95 % čistých příjmů protokolu na zpětné odkupy ENA a distribuci držitelům. Arthur Hayes mezitím koupil 25,33 milionu ENA za 5,53 milionu USD.
TLDR: ENA price prediction centers on Arthur Hayes’ $0.50 target after he bought 25.33 million ENA for $5.53 million at an average price of $0.09. Ethena approved a fee switch that directs 95% of protocol net revenue toward ENA buybacks and redistribution to token holders, linking revenue with token demand. ENA/USD faces resistance near $0.1976, while the MA-50 at $0.1826 and the MA-200 at $0.1038 provide separate technical reference levels. The latest trading session forecast places ENA/USD between $0.1766 and $0.2104, with a 62% upside probability and 38% downside risk. The ENA price prediction has gained attention after Arthur Hayes called for ENA to reach $0.50. According to Lookonchain data, Hayes bought 25.33 million ENA for $5.53 million one month earlier. His average entry stood near $0.09, with an unrealized profit of $3.28 million, or 146%.
Ethena has approved a proposal directing 95% of protocol net revenue toward ENA buybacks and token-holder redistribution. Its total value locked reached $5.21 billion.
ENA Price Prediction Tracks the $0.50 Target and Buyback Demand Hayes’ purchase gives the ENA price prediction a visible on-chain reference, but his target is a personal market view. The reported purchase occurred about one month before the post. Lookonchain identified the transaction size and average acquisition price in its update.
Lookonchain reported 25.33 million tokens, a $5.53 million position value and an average acquisition price near $0.09. The unrealized gain stood at $3.28 million. The 146% return reflects the performance figure cited in the update.
Hayes’ $0.50 call does not establish a formal Ethena forecast. It does, however, place a specific level beside the broader market discussion. Traders can compare that target with support, resistance and protocol developments.
Governance also adds a demand factor to the ENA price prediction. Ethena approved a fee switch that directs 95% of net revenue into ENA buybacks and redistribution. That structure ties protocol revenue to recurring token purchases.
Ethena’s TVL reached $5.21 billion. TVL measures assets users deposited in the protocol, but it does not guarantee token appreciation. The figure provides context for the scale of activity connected to the buyback policy.
Revenue-based purchases differ from discretionary market calls. The proposal creates a documented allocation rule, but it does not specify a fixed daily volume. ENA demand will therefore vary with protocol earnings and the execution schedule. Token redistribution also depends on governance implementation and the final mechanics that governance formally adopts.
Ethena’s $5.21 billion TVL figure covers assets users deposited in Ethena-related contracts. It does not show how much revenue the protocol generated during the period. A larger deposit base can provide scale, but it cannot establish the future value of ENA.
Traders still need to separate confirmed governance action from price speculation. These factors can change expected trading paths.
Any impact from buybacks depends on protocol revenue, implementation and market liquidity. The information does not state the size or timing of future purchases.
Ethena Buybacks Meet Mixed Momentum Near Key ENA Resistance ENA/USD trades below MA20 at $0.2003, while MA50 at $0.1826 and MA200 at $0.1038 provide reference levels. Ichimoku Kijun resistance sits at $0.1976.
Momentum indicators do not point in one direction. MACD shows Strong Buy, while ADX indicates buying interest. RSI reads 52.848, a Buy signal, and Stoch RSI sits in oversold territory.
Source: TradingView The recent trading session places ENA/USD between $0.1766 and $0.2104. It assigns a 62% probability to an upside move and 38% to downside risk. The base case calls for sideways consolidation inside the range.
A sustained move above $0.1976 would strengthen the upside case in the forecast. A break below $0.1766 would weaken it. The ENA price prediction therefore tracks both the $0.50 target and the immediate trading range.
Technical data do not currently confirm a move to $0.50. The data identify the levels traders monitor as ENA/USD responds to buybacks, market liquidity and broader crypto conditions. The ENA price prediction will change if the asset breaks the stated range.
Ethena Labs chce snížit závislost na pohybech Bitcoinu a přesouvá příjmy k tokenizovaným reálným aktivům a diverzifikovaným výnosům. Současně alokovala 200 milionů USD do fondu Janus Henderson Anemoy.
Ethena Labs founder Guy Young wants to do something most crypto projects treat as heresy: build a business that doesn’t live and die by Bitcoin’s mood swings.
The protocol behind the synthetic dollar USDe is actively restructuring its revenue model to reduce exposure to the crypto market’s most familiar gravitational force, shifting toward tokenized real-world assets and diversified yield sources that can generate returns regardless of where BTC trades.
The delta-neutral dilemma Ethena’s core product, USDe, launched publicly in February 2024 with a clever but inherently crypto-dependent mechanism. The protocol pairs spot crypto collateral, think staked Ethereum or Bitcoin, with short positions in perpetual futures contracts. The long and short sides cancel each other out (that’s the “delta-neutral” part), while the protocol captures funding rates and staking rewards as yield.
When the market is bullish and leverage-hungry traders are paying premiums to go long, those funding rates can be generous. When sentiment flips, the math gets less friendly.
This is precisely the dependency Young is trying to break. If your entire revenue engine runs on crypto derivatives markets, your business cycle mirrors crypto’s boom-bust rhythm almost perfectly. For a protocol trying to offer a stable dollar product, that’s a structural tension worth resolving.
The supply trajectory of USDe tells the story clearly. It peaked above $14 billion in October 2025, then contracted to approximately $4 billion by late August 2026. That kind of drawdown, roughly 70% from the high, underscores how sensitive the synthetic dollar’s appeal is to broader market conditions.
Real-world assets enter the picture Ethena’s most tangible move away from crypto-native revenue has been a $200 million reallocation into tokenized AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations, specifically the Janus Henderson Anemoy fund. CLOs are pools of corporate loans bundled into securities, and the AAA-rated tranches sit at the top of the repayment waterfall. They’re about as far from a memecoin as financial instruments get.
The logic is straightforward. By parking a meaningful chunk of reserves in yield-bearing traditional assets that exist entirely outside crypto’s price cycles, Ethena can generate baseline revenue even during prolonged bear markets. It’s a hedge against the hedge, if you will.
Young’s background makes this pivot less surprising than it might seem. Before founding Ethena Labs in March 2023, he spent roughly six years at Cerberus Capital Management, a firm that manages tens of billions in credit, real estate, and private equity. The playbook of diversifying across uncorrelated yield sources is standard practice in traditional finance. Applying it to a crypto-native protocol is the novel part.
Payments, audits, and the institutional play The real-world asset reallocation isn’t the only iron in the fire. On September 1, 2026, Ethena launched the beta version of Ethena Pay on the Avalanche network. The service lets USDe holders spend their synthetic dollars through Visa cards, with yields up to 6% and rewards tied to the ENA governance token.
Turning a yield-bearing stablecoin into something you can tap at a coffee shop is a meaningful step for adoption. It transforms USDe from a DeFi instrument into something that looks, from the user’s perspective, like a high-yield checking account with a debit card attached.
On the compliance front, Ethena recently completed a SOC 2 Type II audit without exceptions. For the uninitiated, SOC 2 Type II is an auditing standard that evaluates how a company handles data security and operational controls over time. Passing clean is table stakes for any fintech company courting institutional money, and it’s increasingly becoming a differentiator in crypto, where many protocols still operate without comparable oversight.
These moves collectively paint a picture of a protocol trying to cross the credibility gap between DeFi experimentation and institutional-grade financial infrastructure.
The governance side is evolving too. An approved fee-switch proposal would direct 95% of net revenue toward ENA token buybacks, but it comes with a catch: the mechanism only activates when USDe supply hits $7.5 billion. With supply currently sitting around $4 billion, that target roughly doubles the current outstanding amount. It’s an incentive structure designed to align token holders with protocol growth, though reaching that threshold will require reversing the supply contraction of the past year.
Ethena’s strategic direction reflects a broader pattern emerging across major crypto protocols. Tether, the dominant stablecoin issuer, has been diversifying its reserves into US Treasuries and other traditional assets for years. Hyperliquid and other DeFi platforms are similarly exploring revenue models that don’t rely entirely on crypto trading volumes or token price appreciation.
The common thread is a recognition that purely crypto-native business models are inherently cyclical. When Bitcoin rallies, everything works. When it doesn’t, protocols bleed users, revenue, and relevance. Building durable financial infrastructure requires income streams that persist through downturns.
For Ethena specifically, the question is whether the pivot happens fast enough to matter. A 70% contraction in USDe supply suggests that the market has already voted with its feet during the current cycle. The combination of real-world asset yields, payment functionality, and cleaner compliance credentials gives the protocol a different pitch to make on the next upswing.
Whether that pitch resonates depends partly on execution and partly on how the competitive landscape evolves. The synthetic dollar space is getting more crowded, and every protocol entering it is studying the same playbook of delta-neutral strategies and RWA diversification. Ethena’s head start and institutional credibility give it an edge, but maintaining that lead while USDe supply sits well below its peak will test whether the new model can actually deliver on the promise of cycle-resistant revenue.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena Pay spustila self-custodial neobankovní aplikaci na síti Avalanche, která držitelům USDe nabízí až 6% APY a cashback v AVAX při platbě kartou Visa.
Most DeFi founders talk about bringing crypto to the masses. Guy Young decided to just build the bank.
Ethena Pay, a self-custodial neobank app built exclusively on the Avalanche blockchain, went live on September 1. The app lets users hold balances in USDe, Ethena’s synthetic dollar, while earning up to 6% APY. Users can spend those balances through a Visa card with cashback ranging from 4-5% at baseline, scaling up to 10% at select merchants. The cashback is paid in AVAX.
From delta-neutral trades to debit cards Young spent nearly a decade in traditional finance, including roughly six years at Cerberus Capital Management, before founding Ethena Labs in March 2023. The original thesis behind Ethena centered on USDe, a synthetic dollar maintained through delta-neutral strategies. Think of it as holding a crypto asset while simultaneously shorting it, so the value stays pegged regardless of which direction the market moves.
That strategy worked well enough to push USDe’s circulating supply past $14B in October 2025. Then came the cooldown. By late August 2026, the supply had contracted to an estimated $4-6B. Rather than waiting for DeFi’s total value locked to revisit its old highs, Young pivoted toward consumer finance.
Ethena Pay launched in approximately 48-50 countries on iOS, beginning with a beta phase of around 400 users. The initial rollout excludes the US due to regulatory considerations, though plans to expand into the US, UK, and EU were described as weeks away at launch. Android compatibility, multi-currency accounts, and broader geographic coverage are also on the roadmap.
Seven-figure deposits landed within the first two weeks, and the platform has historically processed over $30B in mint and redeem flows across its ecosystem.
Why a neobank instead of another protocol Stablecoins like USDC and USDT generate enormous yield for their issuers, Circle and Tether respectively, by parking reserves in Treasury bills and similar instruments. The users holding those stablecoins get zero percent of that yield. Young’s bet is that users will prefer a synthetic dollar that passes yield back to them. A 6% APY on a dollar-denominated balance, combined with meaningful cashback on spending, is a value proposition that most traditional banks and even most fintech neobanks can’t match.
The tiered rewards structure adds a loyalty mechanic. Pro and VIP cashback levels require users to either lock ENA, Ethena’s governance token, or bring in referrals.
The backing question Ethena has begun incorporating real-world asset lending into USDe’s backing, moving beyond its original delta-neutral strategies. The original approach carried risks tied to funding rate volatility and exchange counterparty exposure. Those funding rates — the periodic payments between long and short traders on perpetual futures — can swing negative during prolonged downturns, eroding the yield that makes USDe attractive.
What this means for the competitive landscape Ethena Pay enters a space occupied by crypto debit cards from Coinbase and Crypto.com, as well as fintech neobanks like Revolut and Nubank that have added crypto features. Ethena Pay’s architecture, built on Avalanche, keeps user funds in their own custody while still enabling fiat-denominated spending. The AVAX-denominated cashback creates a natural demand loop for the network’s native token.
The US exclusion at launch isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. Whether Ethena can navigate the compliance landscape fast enough to reach its most lucrative potential markets will likely determine whether this becomes a footnote or a turning point.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena Labs is rewriting the playbook for its synthetic dollar. USDe, which built its reputation on crypto-native basis trades, is now leaning into something that would feel more at home in a Goldman Sachs pitch deck: AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations.
From basis trades to bond-adjacent assets The shift has been building for months, but the clearest signal came in June 2026 when Ethena allocated $200 million to the Janus Henderson Anemoy AAA CLO Fund, known as JAAA. The allocation was executed through a partnership with Centrifuge on the Solana blockchain.
Ethena’s Risk Committee approved the position and set a cap of approximately $310 million, leaving room for further deployment. By mid-2026, real-world assets accounted for roughly 11% of USDe’s total backing, a meaningful chunk for a protocol that previously relied almost entirely on perpetual futures positions.
The US AAA CLO market is valued at roughly $500 to $600 billion, making it one of the most liquid corners of structured credit. These instruments offer floating-rate yields tied to SOFR, the benchmark rate that replaced LIBOR, with a reported quarterly mean spread of about 61 basis points.
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Why the pivot matters Ethena founder Guy Young has framed the expansion as a deliberate move toward institutional-grade strategies. The goal is to introduce low-duration, lower-risk instruments into USDe’s backing, reducing dependency on the crypto market’s mood swings.
Perpetual futures positions had already dropped to about 11% of USDe’s backing by April 2026, a steep decline from their previously dominant role.
Further integrations have deepened the RWA exposure. STAC, delivered through Securitize, has expanded USDe’s tokenized AAA CLO holdings beyond the initial JAAA allocation. Partnerships with institutional heavyweights like Anchorage Digital and Coinbase Asset Management reinforce the message that Ethena is courting a different kind of investor now.
Scale and stability As of September 2026, USDe’s circulating supply sat at approximately $4.7 billion, with supply holding firm near the $4.5 to $4.7 billion range throughout the transition period.
No AAA-rated CLO tranche has ever experienced a principal loss, a track record that gives Ethena a compelling narrative for institutional adoption.
What to watch going forward The key metric is how far Ethena pushes the RWA allocation. The current 11% share leaves significant room to grow, and the $310 million position cap on JAAA alone suggests the Risk Committee is comfortable with further scaling.
The yield dynamics also deserve scrutiny. AAA CLO spreads of around 61 basis points over SOFR are respectable in traditional finance but modest compared to what crypto basis trades can generate during bullish periods.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena Pay plánuje během tří až čtyř týdnů spustit expanzi do USA, Británie a Evropy. Firma říká, že další rozšíření závisí na partnerech kolem karty Visa.
Ethena Pay expects to begin expanding into the US, UK and Europe within three to four weeks as the company works with its card partners to bring the consumer money app to additional markets.
Founder and CEO Guy Young said during a Sept. 14 Unchained interview that geographic expansion is currently the team’s top priority, with the US, Europe, the UK and parts of Asia including Taiwan among the next markets expected to come online.
Young said many of those regions could become available within roughly three to four weeks.
The timeline is later than Ethena’s previous guidance. In a Sept. 3 blog post, the company listed US and EU support among features expected to arrive in September.
Ethena Pay’s jurisdictions page currently lists the US, EU, UK, Switzerland, Canada, Taiwan and South Korea as coming soon without providing specific launch dates.
Young said the expansion schedule partly depends on the companies supporting Ethena Pay’s Visa card. The card is issued by Third National and managed by Rain, with Ethena dependent on their ability to bring the product into additional jurisdictions.
The card is currently unavailable to US citizens, residents and other US persons under its terms.
Ethena Labs launched Ethena Pay on Sept. 1 as a consumer facing product designed to give users direct access to its ecosystem rather than relying primarily on exchanges.
Young said the US is not among the company’s five highest priority markets over the longer term, pointing instead to South America and Asia as regions where Ethena already has a significant user base.
Ethena Pay remains in a gated beta, with Young saying the company is intentionally expanding the product gradually.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena Labs oznámila dokončení auditu SOC 2 Type II s čistým výrokem a nulovými výjimkami. Audit prověřil bezpečnostní a provozní kontroly protokolu USDe.
Ethena Labs, the team behind the synthetic dollar protocol USDe, says it has completed a SOC 2 Type II audit with a clean opinion and zero exceptions. In plain terms, an independent auditor examined the company’s security and availability controls over an extended period and found nothing wrong.
What SOC 2 Type II actually means SOC 2 is an auditing framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. It evaluates how a company handles data security, system availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.
The “Type II” distinction is the important part. A Type I audit checks whether a company’s controls are properly designed at a single point in time. Type II goes further: it tests whether those controls actually worked as intended over a sustained period, typically several months to a year.
A “clean opinion with zero exceptions” means the auditor found no instances where controls failed or deviated from their stated design.
Why this matters for Ethena and USDe Ethena’s core product, USDe, is a synthetic dollar that maintains its peg through delta-neutral hedging strategies. The protocol uses crypto collateral like staked ETH and BTC, managed through perpetual futures positions, to keep USDe hovering around $1.
As of July 2026, USDe’s supply stood at approximately $4.46 billion with a backing ratio exceeding 100%. The protocol already undergoes multiple smart contract audits, with no critical or high-severity vulnerabilities reported. Monthly custodian attestations confirm that assets backing USDe are held off-exchange.
Smart contract audits verify that code behaves as expected. Custodian attestations confirm assets exist where they’re supposed to. SOC 2 Type II evaluates the human and organizational layer: access controls, incident response procedures, change management, monitoring systems, and the operational discipline that keeps everything running.
The institutional credibility play Ethena recently launched Ethena Pay in beta on September 1, 2026, a self-custodial application that lets users earn USDe yields and cashback rewards. Partnerships with platforms including Coinbase and asset manager Janus Henderson signal that Ethena is positioning itself as a bridge between DeFi yields and traditional finance infrastructure.
SOC 2 Type II certification is essentially table stakes for any technology company that wants to work with banks, asset managers, and regulated financial institutions. Most DeFi protocols don’t pursue SOC 2 because their users are primarily retail participants and other protocols.
Circle, the issuer of USDC, has long touted its SOC 2 compliance as a competitive advantage over less transparent alternatives. Notably, as of the audit’s claimed completion date of September 14, 2026, no independent confirmation of Ethena Labs’ SOC 2 Type II result has appeared in crypto media or Ethena’s official channels.
The key question going forward is whether Ethena will publish the full SOC 2 report or make it available to prospective partners under NDA, which is the more common practice. Full public disclosure would set a new transparency benchmark for DeFi protocols, while restricted access would follow the standard playbook used by most enterprise software companies.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
TRON DAO (“TRON”) and Ethena Labs (“Ethena”) today announced that USDe and sUSDe are live on the TRON network, expanding access to Ethena’s digital dollar products across one of the world’s largest stablecoin settlement networks.
Users can now bridge USDe and sUSDe to TRON through Stargate Finance and hold or transfer both assets across the network. Support across TRON’s core DeFi applications, including JustLend DAO and SUN.io, is expected to roll out over the coming weeks, with broader adoption across wallets, exchanges, and payment applications to follow. USDe on TRON will also remain connected to liquidity across Ethena’s other supported networks, supporting interoperability across Ethena’s broader multichain ecosystem.
USDe brings an additional dollar-denominated asset to TRON, while sUSDe gives TRON’s global user base exposure to Ethena’s rewards-bearing digital dollar product. In turn, Ethena connects with TRON’s global base of over 403 million accounts, where dollar-denominated assets already move at significant scale.
“Millions of people rely on the TRON network every day to make payments, save, and move value globally,” said Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. “Bringing USDe and sUSDe to TRON broadens the options available to users and further strengthens the network as decentralized infrastructure for everyday use.”
“TRON has a massive user base that already holds and moves digital dollars in significant size,” said Guy Young, Founder of Ethena Labs. “Bringing USDe and sUSDe to that ecosystem means those users can hold a dollar that accrues rewards on the network they already use. This integration is the latest step in our effort to bring our digital dollar products to as many people as possible, and we look forward to continuing to work with the TRON DAO team to find new ways to bring value to TRON’s users.”
The integration marks the latest step in USDe’s multichain expansion, with the asset now supported across more than a dozen networks and integrated with leading centralized exchanges and DeFi applications.
StablecoinX jmenovala bývalého výkonného pracovníka Franklin Templeton pro digitální aktiva Christophera Jensena do funkce CEO. Firma je největším korporátním držitelem ENA a drží asi 3,03 miliardy tokenů.
Franklin Templeton digital asset veteran takes helm at StablecoinXLatest NewsPublishedSep 8, 2026
Former Franklin Templeton digital asset executive Christopher Jensen will lead StablecoinX, the largest corporate holder of Ethena’s ENA token.
StablecoinX appointed former Franklin Templeton digital asset executive Christopher Jensen as CEO, putting him in charge of the largest corporate holder of Ethena’s ENA token.
Jensen succeeds Ted Chen, who led StablecoinX through its public listing in June and will remain chairman of the company’s board.
StablecoinX, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker USDE, is a publicly listed company focused on the Ethena ecosystem. Ethena issues USDe, a synthetic dollar that ranks as the fifth-largest stablecoin with nearly $4.4 billion in circulation, according to DefiLlama data. ENA, Ethena’s governance token, gives holders voting rights over changes to the protocol.
StablecoinX holds about 3.03 billion ENA tokens, roughly 20% of the token’s total supply, which the company says makes it ENA’s largest corporate holder.
Before joining StablecoinX, Jensen was a portfolio manager and director of digital asset research at Franklin Templeton, where he helped build the firm’s digital asset group after its launch in 2018. The asset manager’s blockchain venture fund participated in Ethena’s seed round, giving Jensen exposure to the protocol from its early stages.
The appointment comes about a week after Ethena launched Ethena Pay, a self-custodial app that lets users spend, save and transfer its USDe synthetic dollar.
The ENA token remains down about 20% year to date but has rebounded sharply in recent weeks, gaining more than 80% over the past month to trade around $0.16, according to CoinGecko.
ENA token price over the past month. Source: CoinGecko
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Aave’s newly launched V4 protocol on Ethereum is now distributing USDe rewards through its dedicated Ethena ecosystem market, giving DeFi users a fresh set of incentives to park capital in one of the most actively used synthetic dollar systems in crypto.
The activation marks a significant operational milestone for both protocols. Aave V4 rolled out with a purpose-built Ethena environment featuring two “Spokes,” the largest ecosystem-specific deployment at launch, supporting USDe, sUSDe, PT-sUSDe, and PT-USDe as collateral assets.
What the Ethena Spokes actually do Inside those Spokes, users can deposit Ethena’s synthetic dollar USDe and its staked variant sUSDe to borrow against, earn rewards, or engage in what the community has affectionately dubbed “Aavethena” strategies. These are recursive borrowing loops where a user deposits USDe, borrows against it, converts the borrowed funds back into USDe, and repeats the cycle to stack yield.
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USDe is designed as a delta-neutral synthetic dollar, meaning Ethena Labs backs it with productive assets hedged through perpetual futures positions. The net exposure stays close to zero while the underlying positions generate yield.
During peak periods, Aave has supported over 50% of the total USDe supply, making Aave the single most important liquidity venue for Ethena’s flagship asset.
USDe’s growth trajectory USDe supply recently surpassed $12 billion. USDe reportedly crossed the $10 billion mark in under 500 days from its inception, a pace of growth driven in large part by the leveraged looping strategies enabled by Aave’s lending infrastructure.
Ethena distributes discretionary incentives that accrue to sUSDe holders through a token vault structure. As rewards accumulate, they increase the USDe value backing each unit of sUSDe, creating a compounding dynamic that draws in yield-seekers.
New features reduce friction One of the notable additions accompanying the V4 launch is Liquid Leverage, a feature that allows users to make 50/50 USDe/sUSDe deposits. The practical upside: it enhances liquidity and rewards while reducing the cooldown period that typically applies when unstaking sUSDe.
Aave’s governance has also implemented structural safeguards for the partnership. Whitelisted redemption mechanisms are in place to manage inter-protocol risk, essentially creating controlled exit channels that prevent a bank-run scenario where mass redemptions could destabilize either protocol.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Komunita Ethena jednomyslně schválila návrh na využití výnosů protokolu k programatickým zpětným odkupům ENA. Token za posledních 24 hodin vzrostl asi o 15 % na 0,172 USD.
A significant governance decision has been made within the Ethena ecosystem that could directly impact the ENA token. According to a statement from the Ethena Foundation, the “fee conversion” proposal, which envisages using protocol revenues for ENA buybacks, was approved with 100% support.
Following the decision, it was announced that programmatic ENA buybacks would be launched. The foundation stated that the buyback program would be gradually expanded as specified performance metrics and milestones are met. Thus, it is planned that a portion of the revenue generated by the Ethena protocol will be used to directly purchase ENA from the market.
This development also had a positive impact on the ENA price. According to market data, ENA rose by approximately 15 percent in the last 24 hours, reaching $0.172. The token ranks 45th in market capitalization.
This latest decision is a continuation of the broader token economic changes announced by the Ethena Foundation on August 27. In that announcement, the Foundation revealed four significant changes, including the buyback of locked tokens held by early investors, increased economic alignment between the ENA token and company equity, the initiation of a governance process for ENA buybacks using protocol revenues, and the cancellation of future monthly token unlocks for venture capital investors.
*This is not investment advice.
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Ethena spustila Ethena Pay na Avalanche, mobilní aplikaci pro každodenní platby, držení a posílání USDe. Aplikace je dostupná na iOS ve více než 50 zemích.
Ethena has launched Ethena Pay, a mobile financial application that brings its USDe digital dollar into everyday use, from holding and sending money to making purchases and earning savings. According to an announcement from Ava Labs, the product is built exclusively on Avalanche, which handles USDe transfers, payments and settlement behind the scenes while users see a familiar consumer experience.
A Digital-Dollar Account for Daily Spending Ethena Pay combines a traditional account with a digital-dollar balance held in USDe, letting users move between fiat and digital dollars locally and globally, transfer funds and make purchases. Balances can be spent through Visa’s network of more than 130 million merchants. The launch builds on Ethena’s earlier work bringing USDe into payments and gives the protocol a direct channel to put the stablecoin to work in recurring activity rather than leaving it confined to trading and DeFi platforms.
Avalanche as the Settlement Layer The launch leans on Avalanche for the speed, low transaction costs and scalability needed to move value inside a consumer app, with users never required to select a network or interact directly with blockchain infrastructure. Ethena founder Guy Young framed the move as a bet on tokenized assets. “Avalanche was focused on RWAs and tokenized assets before almost anyone else was talking about them,” he said, adding that Ethena Pay can plug into liquidity and applications already live in the Avalanche ecosystem.
Why Digital Dollars Are Moving Beyond DeFi The product is positioned as part of a broader shift in which digital dollars stop behaving like crypto assets and start functioning like money that consumers can earn, hold, move and spend. Ava Labs argues that many neobanks and fintechs still depend on fragmented banking and payment infrastructure, while Ethena Pay runs on a single programmable layer that stays out of view. Digital-dollar balances in the app are held in USDe, creating a path from issuance into holding, sending, spending and saving.
What Comes Next Ethena says the app is available on iOS in more than 50 countries, with Android access, availability in the United States and European Union, and multi-currency accounts expected to follow. The rollout extends an existing business that has already processed more than $30 billion through its mint and redeem systems, integrated USDe across more than 100 platforms and protocols, and secured a USDe backing facility with FalconX, a scale the company now aims to direct toward everyday payments and savings.
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TLDR Ethena launched Ethena Pay, a consumer finance app combining stablecoin savings, card spending, transfers, and fiat onramps. The app offers a 6% dollar savings rate and 5% cashback on eligible card purchases. ENA rose about 9% after the announcement, outperforming a broadly flat crypto market. Ethena selected Avalanche as the exclusive settlement network for payments, transfers, and money movement on the app. Ethena Pay supports dollar, pound, and euro onramps, local currencies, and fiat IBANs linked to self-custodial stablecoin accounts. Ethena has launched Ethena Pay, a consumer finance app that brings stablecoin savings, payments, transfers, and fiat access into one platform. The product expands Ethena beyond its yield-focused dollar products and gives users a way to manage digital dollars.
The app went live on Apple’s App Store on Tuesday. Ethena said the service offers a 6% dollar savings rate and 5% cashback on card purchases. ENA, the protocol’s native token, rose about 9% after the announcement while the wider crypto market stayed flat.
Ethena Expands Beyond USDe Savings Ethena Pay connects savings with daily spending. Users can hold funds, earn rewards, make card purchases, and transfer money without moving assets between several platforms. The app supports free dollar, pound, and euro onramps. It adds local currency access and international bank account numbers linked to self-custodial stablecoin accounts. These features make stablecoins easier to use for financial needs.
Ethena has expanded its product range during 2026. The protocol previously focused on USDe, a synthetic dollar token with $4 billion in circulation. Its yield model relied mainly on crypto basis trades. Ethena Pay also includes a feature called “Buy Now Pay Never.” The system uses rewards earned on savings to cover purchases while leaving the user’s main balance untouched.
This setup links the app’s savings and payments functions. A user can keep funds in one account, earn returns, and use those rewards for spending without transferring money elsewhere. Earlier this year, Ethena introduced a savings product with Coinbase. That agreement gave Ethena another distribution channel through a crypto exchange with more than 100 million users.
Avalanche Handles Ethena Pay Settlement Ethena selected Avalanche as the exclusive settlement network for Ethena Pay. Avalanche will process transfers, payments, money movement, and settlement across the app. The choice expands Ethena’s infrastructure beyond the Ethereum-focused systems that supported its earlier growth. Avalanche will now serve as the core network behind the consumer finance product.
Ethena has limited initial access to 400 users. The project plans to add more users each week as it moves the app out of beta during September. The launch gives Ethena a consumer product combining stablecoin savings with payment tools. The company is positioning Ethena Pay as an “internet money neobank” built around digital dollars and self-custodial accounts.
Ethena Foundation navrhuje automatické zpětné odkupy ENA z 95 % čistých příjmů, ale až po růstu USDe na 7,5 miliardy USD v oběhu. Hlasování končí 2. září.
Ethena’s foundation just dangled a carrot in front of ENA holders: automated buybacks funded by nearly all of the protocol’s net revenue. The catch is that USDe, Ethena’s synthetic dollar, needs to roughly double its circulating supply first.
The proposal, put to a governance vote that closes September 2, would activate a “fee switch” once USDe reaches $7.5 billion in circulation. At that point, 95% of net revenue from Ethena’s operations would flow into automated ENA purchases on the open market. Current USDe supply sits somewhere around $4 billion to $4.6 billion, meaning the trigger requires approximately 85% growth from where things stand today.
Markets responded before the ink was dry. ENA surged roughly 16-23% intraday to around $0.17, capping off a broader rally that saw the token climb more than 70% over the preceding week.
The full restructuring package The buyback proposal is the flashiest piece, but it sits inside a larger restructuring effort the Foundation unveiled on August 27. The package addresses three distinct pressure points that have weighed on ENA’s price trajectory.
First, the Foundation is conducting OTC buyouts of locked ENA from seed investors who hold allocations greater than 0.25% of total supply. These are investors who had already sold their stakes after ENA hit a peak on October 10, 2025. Buying out their locked positions removes a known overhang of future selling pressure.
Second, upcoming investor token unlocks are being consolidated and accelerated into a single phase on October 5, 2026. Rather than letting unlocks drip out over multiple months, the Foundation is compressing the pain into one event. Team tokens, notably, remain locked.
Third, an in-principle agreement expected in October 2026 would secure Ethena’s protocol intellectual property and economic benefits primarily for the Foundation itself, creating separation from Ethena Labs’ equity holders.
The math behind the fee switch The fee switch operates on an incremental model. At the $7.5 billion USDe threshold, the Foundation estimates approximately $22.5 million in annualized revenue would be available for buybacks, assuming a 6% APY on the protocol’s underlying positions. Higher USDe supply milestones would unlock progressively larger buyback allocations.
There is a trade-off baked into this structure. Routing 95% of net revenue toward ENA buybacks means reducing USDe distributions, the yield payments that have been one of the protocol’s primary draws for stablecoin holders.
USDe’s circulating supply peaked at around $15 billion in October 2025, roughly three times higher than where it sits now. The subsequent contraction, losing more than two-thirds of its supply, is a reminder that synthetic dollar demand can evaporate quickly when market conditions shift. Getting back to $7.5 billion would still represent just half of that prior peak.
What this means for ENA holders and DeFi broadly The conditional nature of the buyback is worth sitting with. Unlike protocols that simply announce buybacks and execute them regardless of conditions, Ethena is making its token holders root for the underlying product’s growth. If USDe doesn’t expand, the buyback never activates.
The OTC buyout of seed investors addresses one of the most reliable sources of selling pressure in crypto markets. By proactively purchasing locked allocations from investors who have already demonstrated willingness to sell — they offloaded positions after the October 2025 peak — the Foundation is trying to remove the most motivated sellers from the equation before they ever hit the open market.
The consolidation of remaining unlocks into a single October 2026 event eliminates months of drip-feed uncertainty but concentrates potential selling pressure into one window.
One risk worth flagging: the entire buyback mechanism depends on Ethena’s revenue, which itself depends on the basis trade that underpins USDe’s yield. In periods where funding rates compress or turn negative, that revenue shrinks. A scenario where USDe reaches $7.5 billion but funding rates have collapsed would produce buybacks too small to meaningfully support ENA’s price — a possibility the annualized $22.5 million estimate doesn’t fully capture since it assumes a steady 6% APY.
The governance vote concludes September 2. For a protocol that once commanded $15 billion in synthetic dollar circulation, reaching half that number would still require approximately 85% growth from current supply levels.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena rozšiřuje USDe do akciových perpů, zatímco uzavírá HyENA; všechny trhy skončí 2. září. Současně přepracovává tokenomiku ENA a navrhuje přepínač poplatků pro buybacky po návratu nabídky USDe nad 7,5 mld. USD.
Ethena is expanding USDe into equity perps as it overhauls ENA tokenomics and looks to reignite ecosystem growth.
Ethena is expanding USDe’s yield engine beyond crypto while overhauling ENA’s tokenomics as momentum returns to the ecosystem.
What’s the Scoop?From HyENA to Equities: Ethena is expanding USDe’s basis trade into equity perps just as HyENA, the USDe-margined HIP-3 exchange it backed, shuts down, stifled by Hyperliquid’s increasing alignment with USDC. All HyENA markets will be shuttered by Sept. 2.ENA Gets an Overhaul: Yesterday, the Ethena Foundation announced a series of changes aimed at tightening ENA’s economics. It bought out locked tokens from certain seed investors, shifted protocol IP and economic value toward the Foundation, pushed remaining original investor unlocks to Oct. 5, and proposed an ENA fee switch that would begin buybacks once USDe supply returns above $7.5B.Momentum Returns: USDe supply has climbed back above $4B over the last month while ENA has rallied alongside the announcements. The token is up roughly 15% over the past week and over 100% the past month.
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David is a writer/analyst at Bankless. Prior to joining Bankless, he worked for a series of early-stage crypto startups and on grants from the Ethereum, Solana, and Urbit Foundations. He graduated from Skidmore College in New York. He currently lives in the Midwest and enjoys NFTs, but no longer participates in them.
Ethena plánuje v příštích týdnech rozšířit zajištění USDe o equity perps, které od března vzrostly 10× na 6 mld. USD v otevřeném zájmu. Firma očekává, že tento segment RWA časem předstihne krypto basis.
Ethena’s yield product, USDe, will receive another expanded collateral backing from basis on equity perpetuals (perps).
According to the project, equity perps, also known as RWA (real-world asset) tokenization perps, have grown 10x to $6B in Open Interest since March.
The project added that the RWA perps market could grow 100x bigger, offering scalable basis yield opportunity that’s not tied to the cyclical crypto market.
The underlying asset base is >$150 trillion compared to ~$2.5 trillion of crypto, making this the most scalable extension of the basis allocation to date. We expect RWA perpetuals to eclipse crypto allocations in USDe’s backing within 12-24 months.
The protocol expects its RWA perps backing to outpace crypto basis in a year or two. Currently, most of the collateral backing (32%) is in liquid stablecoins (e.g USDT, USDC). DeFi lending is the second largest reserve category with a 31% share across Aave and Morpho.
Source: Ethena Ethena’s aggressive USDe diversification Basis trade involves locking a spread between the spot price of an asset and its futures contract (in this case, perps).
But the strategy only works during the bull market. At the height of the 2024-2025 bull run, USDe market supply peaked at nearly $15B with over 80% in yield. But the supply contracted to $4B and yield slipped below 0% in the crypto winter.
Source: USDe market supply (Ethena) To diversify away from the cyclical crypto market, the project started with traditional credit (powered by Janus Henderson). Currently, this category accounts for 12% of the USDe backing.
The latest RWA perps plan, set to be deployed in the next few weeks, would mark the second wave of diversification.
Speaking on why it delayed USDe expansion in RWA perps, Ethena founder Guy Young said,
We took a cautious approach to what was a nascent market and waited until we saw deep, liquid markets with a data history we could study before moving into the opportunity at scale.
Source: X Guy added that the segment is “one of the very few 100x left” and could surpass global crypto’s volume and Open Interest (OI) in 24 months.
Compared to its main yield rival, the short-term U.S Treasury bond, USDe offered a 1.6% spread. In short, one would expect more yield from USDe than U.S T-bills, before factoring DeFi security risks.
Source: Ethena Ethena has been aggressively upgrading its ecosystem ahead of the next bull run. Whether this round of yield diversification will boost demand for USDe remains to be seen.
Final Summary After expanding USDe yield backing into traditional credit, Ethena now eyes a 100x basis trade opportunity in equity perps Ethena founder said that they delayed the RWA perps expansion to allow the nascent market to develop deeper liquidity
Ethena Foundation odkoupila uzamčené ENA od raných investorů, kteří prodávali po říjnovém vrcholu 2025, a tím předčasně ukončila budoucí měsíční odemykání. ENA po zprávě vzrostla o 11 % za 24 hodin.
Ethena (ENA) jumped 11% after its Foundation bought out seed investors who sold after the October 2025 peak. The move capped a near-100% monthly rally as an ENA buyback vote went live.
The token has carried the same weight since launch, with early investor tokens unlocking every month. That supply drip just ended.
Ethena (ENA) Price Performance in August. Source: TradingViewEthena Buys Out Investors Who Sold After the PeakThe Ethena Foundation announced the deal Thursday, indicating that they spent the past two weeks buying locked tokens directly from early backers. Each was originally allocated more than 0.25% of ENA supply.
We are excited to announce four updates regarding the Ethena ecosystem, further details on each point are provided in the blog linked below:
1. Buyout of early investors:
The Ethena Foundation executed a buyout of all locked tokens from certain major seed investors that sold any…
— Ethena Foundation (@EthenaFndtn) August 27, 2026 The Foundation split those backers into two groups:
Investors who sold any ENA after the October 10, 2025, peak had their locked tokens bought out. Only one wallet said no.
Investors who never sold got a full-price offer. None accepted.
“As a result, the investors who have been selling into the market during the relevant time frame now hold no unvested ENA which could be sold into the market in the future,” the Foundation wrote in its blog.
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The rest of the investor calendar now ends early. All remaining investor tokens unlock on October 5, 2026, and the monthly calendar disappears. Team tokens stay locked on their original schedules. Roughly 12% of supply stays locked, all of it team, ecosystem, and Foundation holdings.
The pressure this fixes was real. Ethena released 171.88 million tokens in early August alone. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes bought 9.05 million ENA days before that release.
One large holder sits outside the deal. StablecoinX, an ENA treasury company, still holds about 20% of supply under a separate lockup disclosed in SEC filings.
ENA Buyback Vote Ties the Fee Switch to USDe GrowthThe fee switch is the second piece. A Snapshot governance vote, open through September 2, would send protocol revenue into ENA purchases. Ethena’s Risk Committee has already approved the design.
There is a catch. Buybacks only start once USDe circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. At that level, 5% of protocol revenue buys ENA. The share scales up to 20% if supply reaches $20 billion.
USDe sits near $4.6 billion today, down from a 2025 peak of about $15 billion. So the switch stays off until supply climbs roughly $3 billion. The Foundation says it wants USDe above $100 billion within five years.
Once that first threshold hits, 95% of net revenue paid to the Foundation funds the purchases. Each buy will be tracked on Ethena’s public dashboard.
The playbook has precedent. Uniswap’s fee switch proposal sent UNI to a two-month high last November.
Ethena also addressed a second old doubt. A Master Framework Agreement, due in October, hands protocol intellectual property and residual value to tokenholders. Ethena Labs equity investors get neither. The Foundation says Labs equity has never taken a dollar of protocol revenue.
Will the ENA Rally Hold?ENA trades near $0.155 after gaining 11% in 24 hours. The token is up 56.5% in a week and 84.6% over the past 30 days. Its market cap stands near $1.52 billion.
ENA Price Performance. Source: BeInCryptoThe bull case is simple. The sellers are gone, the unlock calendar dies in October, and a buyback pipeline is on the ballot. The bear case is just as clean. Buybacks stay off until USDe nearly doubles, and StablecoinX’s 20% stake sits outside the deal.
The Snapshot vote still needs quorum. From there, the signal to watch is USDe supply. Every dollar it climbs brings the ENA buyback switch closer.
CME Group spouští pro ENA od Ethena single-asset referenční hodnoty s cenami v reálném čase a denními referenčními sazbami pro Londýn, New York a APAC. Platit mají od 24. srpna 2026.
CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives marketplace, is rolling out single-asset benchmarks for Ethena’s ENA token, effective August 24, 2026. The new products will deliver real-time pricing and daily reference rates calibrated to London, New York, and APAC trading sessions.
It’s the latest addition to CME’s growing menu of cryptocurrency pricing tools, all administered by CF Benchmarks.
What CME is actually launching The new suite includes three distinct reference rate variants: ENAUSD_RR for the London close, ENAUSD_NY for the New York close, and ENAUSD_AP for the APAC close. Each will publish at 4 p.m. local time in its respective region.
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The rates will be published daily, including weekends and holidays. Alongside the reference rates, CME will also release associated real-time indices for ENA. The pricing data will be sourced from aggregated trading activity across multiple spot exchanges, a methodology designed to reduce the influence of any single venue.
Why Ethena, and why now Ethena operates a synthetic dollar, USDe, that’s collateralized by cryptocurrencies and maintained through delta-neutral hedging strategies. The protocol holds crypto assets while simultaneously shorting them on derivatives exchanges to cancel out price risk, creating something that behaves like a dollar-pegged stablecoin without relying on traditional bank deposits or treasury bills.
ENA is the governance token for this system, giving holders a say in protocol decisions. It’s this token, not the synthetic dollar itself, that CME is now benchmarking.
CME has been steadily expanding its cryptocurrency pricing toolkit throughout 2026, adding various tokens to its CF Benchmarks suite.
What this means for the broader market Portfolio managers and fund administrators need recognized reference rates for net asset value calculations. OTC desks need reliable settlement prices. And product developers, whether they’re building ETFs, structured notes, or lending products, need pricing anchors that regulators and auditors will accept.
The availability of standardized reference rates across three global time zones addresses a practical challenge in crypto markets. Unlike equities, which settle against a single closing auction, crypto trades around the clock. Having London, New York, and APAC reference points gives institutions the ability to mark positions at times that align with their existing operational workflows.
While daily reference rates serve valuation and settlement purposes, real-time pricing feeds are what trading desks need for intraday risk management and algorithmic strategies. Offering both in a single package makes the product useful across the full spectrum of institutional activity, from back-office accounting to front-office execution.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena (ENA) za sedm dní vzrostla asi o 65 % na 0,142 USD po oznámení úvěrové facility v objemu 1 miliardy USD od FalconX a býčích komentářích Arthura Hayese. Trh sleduje rezistenci na úrovni 0,1465 USD.
Ethena price extended its weekly gain to about 65% on Aug. 21, reaching $0.142 after a $1 billion lending deal with FalconX and bullish calls from Arthur Hayes fueled demand for ENA.
Summary
Ethena price gained about 65% in seven days and reached an intraday high near $0.145. A $1 billion FalconX facility will fund overcollateralized loans using assets backing USDe. 4-hour RSI reached 93.97, warning that the near-vertical rally is overheated. A break above $0.1465 could expose $0.1587, while $0.1343 is the first support. Ethena price action today According to data from crypto.news, Ethena (ENA) price traded near $0.140 at press time, up about 20% on the daily chart. The token briefly reached $0.1448 after opening the session at $0.116, extending a rally that began near $0.082 on Aug. 18.
The move carried ENA through several resistance levels in less than three days. Buyers first reclaimed $0.10, which had limited previous recovery attempts, before breaking through $0.1099, $0.1221, and $0.1343.
ENA’s 4-hour chart shows that most of the advance occurred through consecutive large green candles. The token has gained more than 70% from its Aug. 18 low, leaving little consolidation between the previous trading range and its current price.
The breakout also reversed a longer period of weakness. ENA had fallen from above $0.21 at the start of 2026 and spent much of June through mid-August between $0.07 and $0.10.
What is driving the ENA rally? The immediate catalyst was a $1 billion secured warehouse facility announced by FalconX and Ethena.
Under the arrangement, assets backing Ethena’s USDe synthetic dollar can fund overcollateralized loans to institutional borrowers. FalconX will originate and service the loans while also managing the collateral, which will be held with qualified custodians.
Ethena will hold a first-priority security interest over the assets in the lending vehicle. The structure gives the protocol another potential source of returns beyond crypto basis trades, whose yields can weaken when demand for leveraged futures positions declines.
The $1 billion figure describes the facility’s total capacity rather than confirmed capital deployed on its first day. Interest rates, eligible collateral, borrower requirements, and the initial amount drawn have not been disclosed.
Bullish commentary from BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes added to the momentum. Hayes wrote in an Aug. 21 X post that an “$ENA 5 bagger is just too easy,” alongside a chart pointing toward roughly $0.50.
Hayes had previously argued that stronger US dollar liquidity could lift Bitcoin, improve derivatives basis yields, and attract capital back into USDe. On-chain reports earlier in August also linked him to purchases totaling 22.64 million ENA worth about $2 million.
Trader Daan Crypto Trades separately identified $0.14 as an important level after ENA gained more than 30%.
“Could see some resistance there. If it breaks higher we’re off to the races,” the trader said in an Aug. 21 X post.
ENA has now reached that area, making its reaction around $0.14–$0.1465 central to the next move.
ENA indicators warn the rally is overheated Momentum remains strongly bullish, although the 4-hour indicators show a growing risk of short-term profit-taking.
Ethena price 4-hour chart — Aug. 21 | Source: crypto.news ENA’s 4-hour Relative Strength Index reached 93.97, far above the 70 level commonly associated with overbought conditions. Its RSI moving average stood at 75.97, confirming that momentum has remained elevated across several candles rather than during one brief spike.
The Moving Average Convergence Divergence indicator also supports the uptrend. The MACD line rose to 0.0114, above the 0.0062 signal line, while the positive histogram expanded to 0.0052. The widening gap shows that buying momentum was still accelerating when the chart was captured.
Daily Aroon readings provide another bullish signal. Aroon Up stood at 100%, consistent with ENA recording a fresh high, while Aroon Down was at 64.29%. The readings favor buyers but also reflect the speed and volatility of the reversal from ENA’s earlier lows.
Ethena price daily chart — Aug. 21 | Source: crypto.news Overbought readings do not guarantee an immediate decline. However, an RSI near 94 means traders entering after the vertical move face a greater risk if momentum slows or early buyers begin taking profits.
ENA price targets $0.1587 if $0.1465 breaks The daily chart places $0.1465 at the next major resistance. ENA traded just below that level after its intraday high reached approximately $0.1448.
A daily close above $0.1465 would confirm a breakout from the current trading range. The next technical targets would be $0.1587 and $0.1709, followed by $0.1831 if momentum remains strong.
Failure to clear $0.1465 could produce a retest of $0.1343, which previously acted as a reversal level. Lower support sits at $0.1221, followed by $0.1099 and the former breakout area around $0.0977–$0.10.
CoinGlass’ three-day liquidation heatmap shows substantial leverage concentrations below the current price. The strongest nearby clusters appear around $0.118–$0.120, with additional liquidity between $0.104 and $0.116.
Ethena liquidation heatmap | Source: CoinGlass A decline through $0.1343 could therefore accelerate as leveraged long positions face pressure. Holding that level would allow ENA to consolidate without breaking the short-term bullish structure.
US market context remains tied to risk appetite ENA’s rally has also benefited from a broader recovery across the crypto market as Bitcoin moved toward multi-month highs. Rising demand for higher-risk DeFi tokens often follows strength in Bitcoin and Ether, although such assets can also record sharper losses when market sentiment reverses.
FalconX’s US presence gives the lending agreement an institutional connection for American markets. FalconX Bravo, an affiliate of the prime broker, is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a swap dealer focused on crypto derivatives.
The warehouse facility does not remove the risks attached to USDe or ENA. Borrower defaults, collateral declines, custody arrangements, smart-contract exposure, changing derivatives yields, and future token unlocks could still affect the protocol and its governance token.
For now, ENA’s breakout remains intact above $0.1343. A close above $0.1465 would support another leg toward $0.1587, while a rejection combined with the extreme RSI reading would raise the probability of a pullback toward $0.1221.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Ethena uzavřela s FalconX revolvingový zajištěný úvěrový rámec ve výši 1 miliardy USD, který má diverzifikovat krytí USDe směrem k institucionálním půjčkám zajištěným kryptoměnami.
Ethena Labs just cut a deal that fundamentally reshapes what sits behind its synthetic dollar. The protocol has partnered with digital asset prime broker FalconX to launch a $1 billion revolving senior secured credit facility, channeling stablecoins into overcollateralized institutional loans rather than the perpetual futures trades that originally defined USDe’s yield engine.
The facility operates through a bankruptcy-remote vehicle, specifically a Cayman Islands segregated portfolio company called FalconX International Lending Opportunities SP 1. That vehicle acquires crypto-backed institutional loan receivables, with Ethena holding a first-priority security interest on the assets. In plain terms: Ethena lends money to institutions through FalconX’s infrastructure, and if anything goes sideways, Ethena is first in line to get paid back.
From basis trade darling to diversified lender When Ethena first launched USDe, its delta-neutral strategy was the whole pitch. The protocol would hold spot crypto positions and short equivalent perpetual futures contracts, pocketing the funding rate differential.
But funding rates are fickle. They swing with market sentiment, and during bearish stretches they can turn negative, squeezing yields or even generating losses. By early July 2026, perpetual futures basis positions had shrunk to roughly 1% of USDe’s total backing.
Institutional lending has been filling the gap. As of early July 2026, the segment represented 6.9% of USDe’s backing, worth approximately $310 million. The FalconX facility is designed to scale that number considerably, with capacity up to $1 billion.
The estimated annual percentage yield on the institutional lending portion sits between 4% and 7%.
Why FalconX, and why now This isn’t a cold call partnership. FalconX and Ethena have been working together since September 2025, when the prime broker began supporting USDe trading, custody, and collateral services. The new credit facility deepens that relationship into something more structural.
The overcollateralized structure is key to the risk pitch. Every loan in the facility is backed by crypto collateral worth more than the loan itself, and the bankruptcy-remote vehicle means Ethena’s capital is legally walled off from FalconX’s own balance sheet risks. If FalconX hit financial trouble, the segregated portfolio company’s assets wouldn’t be swept into a general creditor pool.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena oznámila partnerství s FalconX, v jehož rámci se stane jeho institucionálním úvěrovým partnerem a bude prostřednictvím kolateralizace investovat do půjček krytých stablecoiny.
USDe issuer Ethena announced it has partnered with digital asset prime broker FalconX to become its institutional lending partner. As part of FalconX Global’s institutional lending allocation, Ethena will invest in its stablecoin lending facilities via overcollateralization. The collaboration enables FalconX to expand its balance sheet, while Ethena benefits from FalconX’s expertise in lending and secured loans, securing more favorable risk-adjusted terms than alternative channels.
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Maple Finance zařadila USDtb od Ethena do své rezervy likvidity v USD. Rezerva tak stojí na stablecoinu krytém převážně podíly ve fondu BlackRocku BUIDL a drží zhruba 400 milionů dolarů v likvidních aktivech.
Maple Finance, one of the larger institutional lending protocols in DeFi, has integrated Ethena’s USDtb stablecoin into its USD liquidity buffer. The move adds a BlackRock-backed stablecoin layer to a reserve pool holding approximately $400 million in liquid assets.
What USDtb actually is and why it matters USDtb is not Ethena’s flashier product. That distinction belongs to USDe, the synthetic dollar that uses derivatives-based hedging strategies to maintain its peg. USDtb is the quieter sibling: a fully reserved stablecoin backed predominantly by shares in BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized US Treasury fund.
Ethena launched USDtb in December 2024, positioning it as the conservative option for protocols and institutions that want stablecoin exposure without the complexity of synthetic mechanisms. For a lending protocol like Maple, which manages overcollateralized loan pools, that risk profile matters enormously.
Maple’s conservative playbook Maple Finance has built its reputation on a specific promise: institutional-grade lending with institutional-grade risk management. The protocol has reported zero losses across billions of dollars in loans issued through April 2026.
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The platform has issued over $15 billion in overcollateralized loans as part of its lending operations. Maintaining a $400 million liquid asset buffer against that kind of loan book isn’t just prudent. It’s table stakes for any protocol trying to attract serious institutional capital.
Adding USDtb to that buffer fits neatly into Maple’s broader strategy of layering its reserves with low-volatility, high-quality assets. The protocol already offers products like SyrupUSDC and a cash management vault, both designed to provide yield while keeping risk profiles conservative. USDtb slots into this lineup as a liquidity-layer asset rather than a yield-generating one.
The Maple-Ethena relationship runs deeper This integration isn’t a cold outreach that turned into a partnership announcement. Maple and Ethena have been building a strategic relationship since early 2025, and the connections run deeper than a single stablecoin selection.
Maple has been involved in initiatives around Ethena’s Converge chain, a purpose-built blockchain designed to bridge traditional finance and DeFi infrastructure. The USDtb integration into Maple’s liquidity buffer is best understood as one piece of a broader collaborative architecture between the two protocols.
On Ethena’s side, governance updates have shown that the protocol’s own reserves include sizable USDtb holdings.
What this means for investors For depositors and lenders using Maple’s platform, the practical implication is straightforward: the protocol’s safety net just got a bit more robust. A liquidity buffer anchored partly in Treasury-backed stablecoins reduces the risk that a sudden market dislocation leaves the protocol scrambling to meet redemptions or manage collateral calls.
There’s a risk dimension to consider as well. USDtb is still a relatively young stablecoin, having launched only in late 2024. While its backing structure is arguably more transparent than most competitors, it hasn’t been stress-tested through a genuine market crisis. The December 2024 launch means it has operated entirely in relatively calm conditions.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Arthur Hayes koupil dalších 10,9 milionu ENA za zhruba 985 000 USD a za pět dní navýšil pozici na 22,64 milionu ENA. Ethena přitom 5. srpna uvolnila 171,88 milionu ENA v hodnotě přibližně 15,36 milionu USD.
Hayes Deepens His Ethena PositionBitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has purchased another 10.9 million $ENA tokens worth approximately $985,000, according to on-chain tracking platform Lookonchain. The latest buys bring his total accumulated position over the past five days to 22.64 million ENA, valued at nearly $2 million.
The sustained buying spree has caught the market's attention because it reflects growing conviction from one of crypto's most closely followed investors. Instead of chasing short-term momentum, Hayes appears to be steadily building exposure while ENA continues trading below its previous highs. Hayes' family office, Maelstrom, has previously backed Ethena's ENA token as part of its broader venture-stage investment strategy.
Ethena Under Pressure Despite Smart-Money InterestThe renewed accumulation comes as $ENA trades well below its historical highs. The token's all-time high was $1.52, with an all-time low of $0.07. It has since recovered modestly but remains under supply-side pressure from a regular unlock schedule. Ethena released 171.88 million ENA tokens on August 5, worth approximately $15.36 million, accounting for 1.97% of the released supply. Of that tranche, 93.75 million tokens were awarded to core contributors, with investors receiving 78.13 million ENA.
Despite the price weakness, Ethena's underlying protocol continues to attract institutional interest. USDe supply stands at $4.7 billion with consistent backing above 100 percent and integrations across Morpho, Pendle, and Hyperliquid. Janus Henderson has also taken a position in ENA to explore regulated products tied to the ecosystem.
Whale activity from prominent figures like Hayes can serve as a market sentiment indicator, though consistent accumulation by a well-known trader does not always predict future price movements. Whether Hayes' steady buying at current levels signals a longer-term conviction play or a tactical repositioning remains to be seen, but it has put $ENA firmly back on the radar of both retail and institutional watchers.
Sources:
BeInCrypto: Here's Where Arthur Hayes Is Putting His Money in 2026
Coinpedia: ENA Price Surges on Fresh Arthur Hayes Buy
Yahoo Finance: 3 Token Unlocks to Watch in the First Week of August 2026
Arthur Hayes během posledních 24 hodin nakoupil více než 7,289 milionu ENA za zhruba 1,2 milionu USD. Ethena se zároveň chystá na odemknutí 171,88 milionu ENA v hodnotě 15 milionů USD.
Despite Ethena’s [ENA] rising dominance in the stablecoin business, the market cap of the altcoin remains well below $1 billion. Its daily trading volume is down to around $150 million, but whales are still going long on the token.
However, this buying is happening right before a massive token unlock, which is in two days. Can the buying pressure from whales outweigh the selling pressure and push ENA higher?
Arthur Hayes buys ENA, but selling pressure remains In the past 24 hours, the co-founder of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, has made another purchase to increase his ENA position. As per Arkham data, Hayes bought 3 million ENA worth $262.77K from Flowdesk.
A few minutes later, Hayes added another 3 million ENA from the Binance exchange worth $262.11K. The total for both positions was above $525K, with an average price of $0.09.
Source: Arkham Moreover, the ENA builder added an eighth consecutive buy of 1.287 million ENA from Binance. The total across these eight transactions was 8.997 million ENA, valued at roughly $739.7K from the same exchange.
Both whales’ positions amounted to more than 7.289 million ENA, valued at over $1.20 million.
However, this activity was happening amid an upcoming token unlock scheduled for August 5. As per Tokenomist, 171.88 million ENA worth $15 million would hit the market. The amount is equivalent to 1.97% of the released supply.
Source: Tokenomist This unlock adds to the 95.31 million ENA worth $8.38 million released on the 2nd of August. The unlock meant that the selling pressure for this month was at its peak during the first few days.
As such, will whale positioning overpower selling pressure from token unlocks and a bearish technical outlook?
Can ENA escape the range market? The price action was stagnant around $0.09, the level where the whales went long. This movement came after surging by more than 14% from $0.0788 to $0.0904.
This level has resulted in two bearish breakdowns previously. And the RSI Divergence appeared to confirm this projection, printing a bearish signal even though it was rising at 55.
On top of that, the transfer count of ENA was declining on Binance, indicating less trading activity. The transfer count was 2.38K, down from 4.17K in late July.
Source: ENA/USDT on TradingView However, if the bulls can keep the altcoin above $0.0875 with more buying, ENA could break past the top of the range at $0.0924. Otherwise, it may drop to $0.0789, which is the demand level that initiated the 14% rally.
Final Summary Arthur Hayes and the ENA builder accumulated over 7.287 million ENA in the past 24 hours, despite looming selling pressure from unlocks. Ethena’s price action was consolidating around $0.09, with more bearish signals forming despite whales positioning.
Největší pozornost míří na PROVE: 5. srpna se odemkne asi 208 milionů tokenů, tedy zhruba 104,17 % současné cirkulující nabídky. To může výrazně zvýšit volatilitu.
Kripto para piyasasında yatırımcıların yakından takip ettiği token kilit açılışları (token unlock) yeni haftada da gündemin önemli başlıklarından biri olacak. 3-9 Ağustos tarihleri arasında PROVE, HYPE ve ENA başta olmak üzere birçok projede milyonlarca dolarlık token dolaşıma girecek. Özellikle dolaşımdaki arzın büyük bölümünü etkileyecek PROVE unlock’u, yatırımcıların en dikkatle izlediği gelişmeler arasında yer alıyor.
PROVE Tokenında Dev Kilit Açılışı Yeni haftanın en dikkat çeken token unlock’u Succinct Labs ekosistemine ait PROVE tokenında gerçekleşecek. Paylaşılan verilere göre 5 Ağustos’ta yaklaşık 208 milyon PROVE tokenının kilidi açılacak. Bu miktar, mevcut dolaşımdaki arzın yaklaşık %104,17’sine denk gelirken, güncel piyasa değeri yaklaşık 35,4 milyon dolar olarak hesaplanıyor. Dolaşımdaki arzın tamamından daha büyük bir miktarın serbest kalacak olması, PROVE fiyatında yüksek volatilite yaşanabileceğine işaret ediyor.
İlginizi Çekebilir: Arthur Hayes Ethereum ve Bu 2 Altcoin’i Sattı!
Haftanın dikkat çeken diğer iki token kilit açılışı ise Hyperliquid (HYPE) ve Ethena (ENA) projelerinde gerçekleşecek. HYPE tarafında 6 Ağustos’ta yaklaşık 433 bin token dolaşıma girecek. Kilit açılışının değeri yaklaşık 22,67 milyon dolar olurken, bu miktar dolaşımdaki arzın yalnızca %0,19’una karşılık geliyor. Öte yandan Ethena (ENA) için 5 Ağustos’ta yaklaşık 171 milyon token serbest bırakılacak. Yaklaşık 15,1 milyon dolar değerindeki unlock, dolaşımdaki arzın %1,97’sini oluşturuyor.
Token Unlock’lar Neden Önemli? Token kilit açılışları, daha önce belirli süre boyunca kilitli tutulan tokenların dolaşıma girmesi anlamına geliyor. Bu tokenlar genellikle ekip üyeleri, erken dönem yatırımcılar, danışmanlar veya ekosistem teşvik programları için ayrılıyor. Kilit açılışı sonrasında yatırımcıların satış yapması durumunda piyasadaki arz artabileceği için fiyat üzerinde kısa vadeli baskı oluşabiliyor. Ancak unlock miktarı, dolaşımdaki arz oranı ve piyasa likiditesi gibi faktörler fiyat üzerindeki etkinin büyüklüğünü belirleyen en önemli unsurlar arasında yer alıyor.
Piyasa analistleri, özellikle dolaşımdaki arzın tamamını aşan büyüklükte token unlock’u gerçekleştirecek projelerde volatilitenin belirgin şekilde artabileceğini belirtiyor.
Değerlendirme 3-9 Ağustos haftasında gerçekleşecek token kilit açılışları arasında en dikkat çeken proje PROVE olarak öne çıkıyor. Dolaşımdaki arzın %104’ünü aşan unlock miktarı, fiyat hareketlerinin sertleşmesine neden olabilir. HYPE ve ENA tarafındaki kilit açılışları ise daha sınırlı arz etkisine sahip olsa da yatırımcıların yakından takip etmesi gereken gelişmeler arasında yer alıyor. Token unlock dönemlerinde yatırımcıların yalnızca açılacak token miktarını değil, ekip cüzdan hareketlerini, işlem hacmini ve piyasa likiditesini de birlikte değerlendirmesi daha sağlıklı kararlar alınmasına yardımcı olabilir.
Son dakika kripto para haberleri için hemen tıkla
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Whaleové stáhli z burz přes 102,1 milionu ENA za zhruba 8,49 milionu USD a část ihned zamířila do stakingu. ENA přitom dál klesá, ale drží support u 0,0800 USD.
Whale accumulation continued reinforcing confidence in ENA despite its recent price weakness, as more than 102.1 million ENA worth roughly $8.49 million left centralized exchanges within hours.
The latest buying activity involved 60 million ENA valued at $4.97 million, another 35 million ENA worth $2.92 million that immediately entered staking, and an additional 7.108 million ENA valued at $600.7K purchased through Binance.
However, ENA still traded lower, highlighting the disconnect between large investor behavior and short-term market sentiment.
Such activity reflected a preference for self-custody and staking instead of immediate distribution. As a result, whales reduced the liquid supply available for trading, while their actions suggested stronger long-term conviction than recent price performance indicated.
Spot outflows kept exchange supply under pressure Exchange flow data continued supporting the accumulation narrative despite ENA’s ongoing decline.
The latest daily Spot Inflow/Outflow reading showed -$450.98K, extending the series of negative netflows visible throughout recent sessions.
Unlike exchange inflows, persistent outflows reflected tokens leaving trading venues instead of entering them for potential selling.
This behavior aligned with the whale withdrawals recorded from Coinbase and Binance.
However, the relatively modest size of the latest outflow also showed that aggressive buying had not yet translated into broad market participation.
Retail demand remained restrained even as larger holders accumulated. Even so, shrinking exchange balances often reduced immediate sell-side liquidity.
If buyers continue absorbing available supply, those conditions could gradually improve ENA’s broader market structure over the coming sessions.
Source: CoinGlass ENA revisits channel support as conviction gets tested Ethena’s [ENA] latest pullback shifted attention away from the recent rally and back toward the strength of its underlying trend.
Instead of breaking below structure, price retreated into the lower boundary of the ascending channel and found support around $0.0800, an area that has repeatedly attracted buyers throughout July.
That reaction kept the broader pattern intact, although upside conviction weakened after another rejection below $0.0900.
Meanwhile, the RSI fell to 47.61, slipping beneath its moving average at 53.52 and below the neutral threshold, reflecting fading buying interest rather than aggressive selling.
The market now sits at a decision point. A strong rebound from channel support could place $0.0900 back within reach and reopen the path toward the upper channel boundary.
However, losing $0.0800 would invalidate the current structure and could shift focus toward the $0.0700 support zone.
Source: TradingView Final Summary Whale buying and exchange outflows continued reducing liquid ENA supply despite the recent decline. ENA held key channel support, while $0.0870 remained the next major upside liquidity zone.
Ethena Labs has now distributed over $751 million in rewards to users since its synthetic dollar protocol went live. That’s a number that would make most DeFi protocols blush, and it underscores just how much yield a delta-neutral staking strategy can generate when conditions are right.
But here’s the thing. While the rewards counter keeps climbing, the protocol’s USDe supply has fallen to roughly $4.3 billion, down from a peak north of $10 billion.
How Ethena prints yield without a money printer For the uninitiated, Ethena’s USDe isn’t your typical stablecoin. It doesn’t sit on a pile of Treasury bills like USDC or claim to be backed 1:1 by cash in a bank vault.
Instead, it uses a delta-neutral strategy. In English: the protocol takes staked ETH derivatives as collateral, then opens short perpetual futures positions against them. The long exposure from holding the collateral and the short exposure from the futures cancel each other out, keeping the value stable.
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The yield comes from two places. First, the funding-rate payments that flow to the short side of perpetual futures markets when conditions are favorable. Second, the staking yields generated by the underlying collateral itself.
It has delivered an average APY of 10.9% on sUSDe, the yield-bearing staked version, since January 2024.
Founded in 2023 by Guy Young, a former hedge fund manager, Ethena Labs launched the USDe protocol in early 2024.
The supply question nobody wants to answer Dropping from over $10 billion to approximately $4.3 billion represents a decline of more than 55%. Reports point to shifting market conditions following significant events in October 2025 as the catalyst.
The delta-neutral model depends heavily on funding rates remaining positive. When the market flips bearish or funding goes negative for extended periods, the yield engine stalls, and capital tends to rotate elsewhere.
Governance moves and the ENA token economy The Season 5 ENA airdrop kicked off in May 2026, distributing roughly 300 million tokens, or about 2% of the total 15 billion ENA supply.
More consequentially, Ethena activated a fee switch in Q1 2026 that directs between 10% and 20% of protocol revenue to stakers of the ENA governance token.
What this means for investors watching the synthetic dollar space For investors evaluating Ethena, the key metric to watch isn’t past rewards. It’s the trajectory of funding rates across major perpetual futures venues. When funding is positive and elevated, Ethena’s engine hums. When it compresses, the protocol’s competitive advantage narrows considerably against simpler, lower-risk alternatives like tokenized Treasuries.
The fee switch activation adds another dimension. A 10–20% revenue share on declining volumes is still a declining payout.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Coinbase označila Centrifuge za preferovanou tokenizační infrastrukturu a zároveň investovala do CFG. New York Life Investment Management navíc přesunula svůj první tokenizovaný fond onchain na Centrifuge a spravuje zhruba 807 miliard USD v aktivech.
Q2 was a breakout quarter. Coinbase named Centrifuge a preferred tokenization infrastructure and took an equity stake in CFG. Kraken Institutional and OKX followed with partnerships of their own. Ethena selected Centrifuge after a competitive RFP and allocated $250M to JAAA. New York Life Investment Management, one of the world's largest active managers at roughly $807B in AUM, brought its first tokenized fund onchain with us. Underneath the announcements, our assets moved deeper into DeFi across new chains, venues, and integrations.
Total Value Locked: $1.6B (-6% QoQ)
CFG Token Holders: 10,988 (+16% QoQ)New York Life brings its first tokenized fund onchainNew York Life Investment Management tokenized its U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Strategy (HYB) on Centrifuge. NYLIM manages around $807B in AUM. HYB is its first tokenized fund and one of the first high yield corporate bond strategies to come onchain. A 180-year-old institution choosing to build on Centrifuge is a signal about where tokenization infrastructure is consolidating.
Coinbase names Centrifuge preferred infrastructureCoinbase selected Centrifuge as a preferred tokenization infrastructure and backed the decision with a strategic investment in CFG. The partnership brings Centrifuge's tokenization framework to Base, with Coinbase's distribution behind it.
Ethena allocates to JAAAEthena selected Centrifuge as a strategic tokenization partner following a competitive RFP, allocating $250M to JAAA as one of the first real-world assets backing USDe. One of the largest allocators in crypto joins the JAAA holder base.
Kraken Institutional adds JAAA to qualified custodyKraken Institutional added JAAA as its first RWA in qualified custody, extending institutional-grade custody to Centrifuge's flagship credit product.
Grove Basin commits $1B for instant JTRSY redemptionsCentrifuge partnered with Grove Basin on a $1B redemption facility for JTRSY, committing daily liquidity for 24/7 USDC instant redemptions. Holders can move out of JTRSY into USDC around the clock, backed by committed liquidity rather than a redemption queue.
IOSG partnership across AsiaCentrifuge and IOSG Ventures entered a strategic partnership to advance institutional tokenization across Asia, targeting Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea. IOSG first backed Centrifuge in 2021 and has now increased its position through open market purchases.
ERC-7540 merged into OpenZeppelinOpenZeppelin merged an implementation of ERC-7540 into its Community Contracts, making the async vault standard co-authored by Centrifuge part of the toolkit most of DeFi builds on. Async settlement is how real-world assets work onchain. What was proven in Centrifuge vaults is now a public building block.
Core assets now live on MonadCentrifuge's core assets went live on Monad, leading with JTRSY, JAAA, and Apollo's ACRDX. The corresponding deRWAs, deJTRSY, deJAAA, and deCRDX, launched alongside them as freely transferable wrappers, giving the assets 24/7 access and onchain liquidity across the Monad DeFi ecosystem.
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Deeper DeFi integration for assets on CentrifugedeSPXA gained traction on Uniswap and was added as collateral on Euler, curated by Clearstar. JAAA became the first asset to support leveraged trading on 3F. JTRSY was integrated into Grvt, expanding retail distribution. deJTRSY and deJAAA went live on Sushi on Stellar and arrived on X Layer at launch, part of a broader distribution partnership with OKX.Centrifuge in the PressCoinDesk: New York Life's $800 billion asset manager makes tokenization debut with Centrifuge fundThe Block: New York Life Investment Management makes first tokenized move partnering with Centrifuge on high-yield corporate bond strategyThe Defiant: New York Life Partners with Centrifuge on Tokenized Corporate BondsDecrypt: New York Life Investment Management Debuts First Tokenized Bond FundMarkets Media: 180-year Old New York Life Adds to Tokenized FundsPYMNTS: New York Life Investment Management Bets on TokenizationCoinDesk: BlackRock, Janus Henderson tokenized funds get instant redemptions with new $1 billion facilityThe Block: Janus Henderson takes ENA position, eyes regulated investment products tied to EthenaCrypto Briefing: Centrifuge partners with Ethena to issue $200M in JAAA tokens on SolanaThe Defiant: Coinbase Taps Centrifuge as Preferred Tokenization PartnerCoinDesk: Coinbase taps Centrifuge as preferred tokenization backbone, takes equity stakeThe Block: Coinbase doubles down on Centrifuge investment, taps platform as tokenization partner for BaseCrowdfund Insider: Centrifuge Launches DeFi Compatible Tokenization Framework On Base, Backed By Coinbase PartnershipBlockonomi: Coinbase Backs Centrifuge Tokenization Rollout on BaseCrypto Briefing: Centrifuge integrates tokenization with DeFi on Base, backed by Coinbase investmentInvezz: Grvt expands wealth platform with Centrifuge yield integrationCentrifuge PerspectivesTokenization: From Exploration to Execution: A joint webinar with S&P Dow Jones Indices and Janus Henderson on real-world asset tokenization strategies and execution.DeFi Drip is back with the first three episodes of season 2, recorded at the RWA Summit.
Bhaji Illuminati, Co-Founder and CEO, Centrifuge LabsPaul Frambot, Co-Founder and CEO, MorphoSebastian Pulido, former Director of Institutional & DeFi Business, Aave LabsUnlocking Tokenized Fund Composability: a joint report from LayerZero and Centrifuge.From Tokenization to Vaults: a five-article series on Centrifuge V3.2 walking through the vault stack design, by Jeroen Offerijns, CTO, Centrifuge Labs.Coindesk Live at Consensus, interview with Bhaji Illuminati, CEO, Centrifuge LabsCoinbase, Tokenized T-Bills, and The Future Of Onchain Finance, interview with Bhaji Illuminati, CEO, Centrifuge LabsDesigning Onchain Utility for RWAs: Infrastructure, Vaults, and Curation, panel with Bhaji Illuminati, CEO, Centrifuge LabsThe RWA Boom and DeFi's Trust Reckoning, interview with Graham Nelson, DeFi Product Lead, Centrifuge LabsPartner InsightsBase: Tokenized S&P 500 exposure from Centrifuge is now live on Base.Serotonin: Centrifuge: Tokenization to UtilityDune: The Rise of Composable RWAsPredicate: Predicate and Centrifuge Partner to Bring Real-Time Compliance to the RWA EcosystemPharos: The RealFi Inflection: Assessing the Strategic Trajectory for the Next DecadeKeyring Network: Keyring Brings Centrifuge’s ACRDX into rwa [un]wind to Power On-Chain LeverageHacken: Q1 2026 Security & Compliance Report
Ethena’s USDe na Morpho nasbíral za necelé čtyři týdny vklady ve výši 323,7 milionu USD, což představuje zhruba 40% růst. Coinbase navíc na Morpho spustila výnosový USDC vault využívající USDe.
Ethena’s synthetic dollar token USDe has accumulated $323.7 million in deposits on the Morpho lending protocol in under four weeks. The number represents a substantial jump from the $225 million to $235 million in Ethena-related total value locked on Morpho that was recorded between March and April 2026. In other words, deposits have grown by roughly 40% in a matter of weeks.
What’s actually driving the growth Morpho’s integration with Ethena dates back to March 2024. That early partnership gave the protocol a head start in building curated lending markets around USDe and its staked counterpart, sUSDe. The staked version acts as productive collateral, meaning it generates yield while simultaneously backing borrowing positions.
In June 2026, Coinbase launched a high-yield USDC vault on Morpho that leverages USDe, giving retail users access to lending strategies that were previously the domain of institutional desks. Ethena has also been strategically allocating its backing assets, including USDT, into Morpho vaults. When the issuer of a synthetic dollar is actively deploying its reserves into the same protocol where users are depositing, it creates a self-reinforcing loop of liquidity and confidence.
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The bigger picture for USDe supply Ethena’s total USDe supply has stabilized between $4.5 billion and $6 billion in 2026. The token previously peaked above $10 billion, meaning current supply levels still represent a roughly 40% to 55% drawdown from all-time highs.
USDe maintains its dollar peg through a delta-neutral strategy: Ethena holds spot crypto positions and simultaneously shorts equivalent futures contracts. The spread between those positions generates yield. When funding rates are positive, this works well; when they’re not, it gets complicated.
Ethena forged a partnership with Janus Henderson in June 2026, bringing traditional asset management credibility to a protocol that lives entirely on-chain.
What this means for DeFi investors The Coinbase USDC vault integration creates a bridge between traditional stablecoin holders and USDe’s yield mechanics. Users deposit USDC, the vault strategy interacts with USDe on Morpho, and retail participants capture returns they couldn’t easily access before.
USDe’s yield depends on funding rates remaining positive across perpetual futures markets. During sustained bearish periods, those rates can flip negative, compressing or eliminating the protocol’s yield advantage. Ethena’s decision to diversify backing assets by deploying USDT into Morpho vaults reflects an awareness of concentration risk.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena USDe se stala dominantním kolaterálem v rámci nového Robinhood Crypto Earn a tvoří zhruba 50 % veškeré stablecoinové nabídky na Robinhood Chain, tedy asi 100 milionů USD z více než 200 milionů USD.
Robinhood’s week-old Earn product has a clear favorite, and it’s not even close. Ethena’s USDe synthetic dollar has emerged as the dominant collateral asset in the lending vault powering Robinhood’s new yield offering, with users overwhelmingly routing their deposits through the protocol.
The Earn product, which launched July 1 alongside Robinhood Chain itself, lets users lend USDG, a stablecoin issued by Robinhood, into a Morpho-powered vault curated by Steakhouse Financial. The estimated return: 7% APY from borrower interest.
How the vault actually works Users deposit USDG into the vault, which then lends those funds to borrowers who post collateral. That collateral comes from three sources: Ethena’s USDe, Spark’s spUSDG, and Maple’s SyrupUSDG.
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As of July 8, Ethena accounts for approximately $100 million of the stablecoin supply on Robinhood Chain. The total supply has surpassed $200 million, meaning Ethena represents roughly 50% of all stablecoins circulating on the chain. That’s a commanding position for a protocol that only listed its ENA governance token on Robinhood back in November 2025.
Insurance coverage for the vault has been arranged through Lloyd’s of London and RELM, covering risks associated with smart contracts and cyber threats.
Why Ethena keeps winning distribution battles USDe works differently from traditional stablecoins like USDC or USDT. Rather than holding dollar reserves in bank accounts, Ethena maintains its peg through a delta-neutral hedging strategy, essentially holding crypto assets while shorting equivalent positions in perpetual futures. The yield comes from funding rates that perpetual futures traders pay.
What this means for investors Robinhood had roughly 24 million funded accounts the last time it reported figures. For ENA token holders, more USDe demand generally means more protocol revenue. The token has been trading on Robinhood since November 2025, giving retail users a direct way to express a thesis on the protocol’s growth.
Ethena’s roughly 50% share of on-chain stablecoin supply suggests users and capital allocators are expressing a strong preference over the two other collateral providers, Spark and Maple. The exact asset allocation percentages among the collateral providers have not been disclosed.
The product is progressively rolling out to U.S. users. Smart contract vulnerabilities, funding rate compression, and regulatory scrutiny of yield products remain live concerns.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ethena Labs zavedla bezpoplatkové mintování a vykupování USDe za USDC pro uživatele na whitelistu po KYC/KYB. Dříve se za konverzi platily poplatky, nyní jsou na 0 bps.
Ethena Labs just removed one of the biggest friction points in its synthetic dollar ecosystem. Onboarded mint users can now mint and redeem USDe using USDC at zero fees, eliminating the basis-point toll that previously ate into every conversion.
The change applies exclusively to whitelisted participants who have cleared KYC and KYB checks and signed Ethena’s Mint User Agreement. Everyone else still gets their USDe the old-fashioned way: through secondary markets, exchanges, or partner platforms like Morpho vaults.
What actually changed and why it matters Before this update, direct minting and redemption of USDe was already restricted to vetted counterparties, primarily market makers and institutional participants. But even those approved users were paying fees on the conversion. Now that cost drops to 0 bps.
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Ethena has also indicated it will update fee schedules for transactions involving non-whitelisted assets, with the new rates visible on public dashboards. So while USDC conversions are now free, other collateral types may still carry costs.
USDe’s positioning in the stablecoin landscape USDe is a delta-neutral synthetic dollar built on Ethereum, which means it maintains its peg not by holding dollars in a bank account but by combining crypto collateral with offsetting derivatives positions. The result is a token that tracks the dollar without directly depending on fiat reserves.
This makes it fundamentally different from USDC, which is backed 1:1 by cash and cash equivalents held by Circle.
Ethena’s integrations extend across both DeFi and CeFi. The protocol works with platforms including HTX for direct mint and redeem functionality, and Morpho for vault-based strategies.
What this means for investors and the broader market The restriction to KYC’d and KYB’d users is worth noting. Ethena is clearly threading the needle between DeFi accessibility and regulatory compliance. For institutions and compliant funds, this is a non-issue. For the permissionless-maximalist crowd, it’s another reminder that the biggest DeFi protocols are increasingly operating within traditional compliance frameworks.
A delta-neutral strategy is only as good as the funding rates it captures from derivatives markets. In periods of sustained negative funding, USDe’s value proposition gets tested in ways that free minting can’t solve. Investors eyeing this development should watch not just the fee structure, but the underlying health of the derivatives markets that keep USDe’s engine running.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The sUSDe ARM is now open for external depositors.
The sUSDe ARM is the first ARM Vault deployed for a yield-bearing stablecoin. The same mechanism that has processed over $3B in volume across stETH and eETH now applies to Ethena’s sUSDe.
sUSDe Has a Redemption Path that Standard AMM Pools IgnoresUSDe is redeemable for its full USDe collateral value through Ethena's unstaking process. That creates a predictable secondary-market dynamic: sUSDe trades at a discount to its USDe backing on DEXs because the unstaking queue takes time, and that illiquidity premium reflects in sUSDe pricing.
In a standard stablecoin pool, that discount is captured by arbitrageurs. The LP earns a swap fee, and the spread leaves the system instead of going back to the liquidity providers that support it.
Unlike traditional AMMs, the sUSDe ARM routes the spread back to LPs.
When sUSDe trades at a discount on DEXs, the ARM sells its USDe liquidity for discounted sUSDe, initiates Ethena's unstaking process, and receives USDe when the redemption settles. When no arbitrage opportunity is present, idle USDe routes to Aave V3. The lending rate earns yield for ARM Vault depositors when arbitrage opportunities aren’t present.
That is the mechanism: redemption arbitrage when discounts are present, lending yield when they are not.
USDe Holders Earn Yield Without Taking Directional Exposure.Depositors earn from sUSDe/USDe arbitrage while holding a stablecoin-denominated position. The current trailing 30-day APY is 4.6%. Yield is tied to market conditions: wider sUSDe discounts produce higher spreads and stronger LP returns.
At minimum, idle capital earns Aave V3 lending rates between arbitrage cycles.
Every ARM Cycle Brings sUSDe Closer to Fair Value.The ARM's arbitrage doubles as peg support: it absorbs sUSDe whenever it trades below redemption value, deepening liquidity and reinforcing the peg to USDe. For sUSDe holders across the Ethena ecosystem, that means tighter secondary-market pricing and reduced friction when exiting to USDe.
The ARM Framework Extends Beyond Liquid StakingThe stETH and eETH ARMs demonstrated that routing the arbitrage value to LPs, rather than external arbitrageurs, produces stronger capital efficiency than standard AMM pools. The sUSDe ARM applies the same logic to a stablecoin market.
LSTs, LRTs, yield-bearing stablecoins, and RWAs all share the same structural dynamic: a primary-market redemption value that secondary markets price around. The sUSDe ARM is the first stablecoin deployment of this framework.
The sUSDe ARM is now open to the public.
Explore the sUSDe ARM → https://app.originprotocol.com/#/arm/1:ARM-sUSDe-USDe
