Ethena Expands USDe Backing Into Equity Perpetuals
Expanding its USDe basis trade to Binance equity perps means Ethena, in theory, opens itself up to a $150T+ market of real-world assets.
Ethena is partnering with Binance to extend the basis trade backing USDe beyond crypto and into the much larger market for tokenized equities.
What's the Scoop?
Basis trade goes TradFi: Ethena will begin backing USDe through delta-neutral equity trades, using tokenized stocks and perpetuals to collect funding payments. In theory, this structure expands Ethena's addressable underlying market from ~$2.5T in crypto assets to $150T+ in real-world assets.
Why Binance: Binance comes equipped with both bStocks (tokenized spot collateral) and USDT-denominated equity perps, letting Ethena use one single venue for both sides of its trade. Further, eligible delta-neutral accounts like Ethena also receive lower priority for Binance's auto-deleveraging system, reducing the risk its strategy gets forcibly closed during market stress.
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Where it can break: Equity basis trades introduce a major wrinkle: U.S. stocks close while their tokenized versions and perpetuals keep trading. Ethena's Risk Committee calls this the strategy's "deepest structural risk", since the perp can drift away from the underlying stock during off-hours, potentially weakening the hedge.
Ethena momentum: The expansion comes as ENA has climbed roughly 60% over the past month, from ~$0.14 to ~$0.23. USDe supply sits around $4.9B, putting it closer to the recently approved fee switch's first trigger: a $7.5B 14-day average supply, at which point Ethena will begin directing a portion of protocol revenue toward ENA buybacks.
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