Ethena Wants to Back a $4bn Stablecoin With Equity Basis Trades

Ethena, which issues the $4bn synthetic dollar USDe, plans to extend the trade behind that token from crypto derivatives into equity perpetual futures, CoinDesk reported. The company said it expects real-world asset perpetuals to account for a larger share of USDe's backing than crypto derivatives within 12 to 24 months. First partner exchanges and deployments are expected in the coming weeks, The Defiant reported.

USDe is not a stablecoin backed by bank deposits or Treasury bills. It holds an asset and simultaneously shorts a perpetual future on that asset, so the two legs offset and the position is roughly delta-neutral. The yield comes from the funding rate, the payment shorts collect from longs when a perpetual trades above spot. That is the basis trade, and until now Ethena has run it almost entirely in bitcoin and ether.

Why equities

Crypto funding is cyclical. When leveraged demand for long exposure is heavy, funding is positive and the trade earns well. When it is not, the yield compresses toward zero and can invert. A stablecoin whose entire return profile depends on one asset class's leverage cycle has a concentration problem, and diversifying the short leg into equity perpetuals is a direct answer to it.

Equity perpetuals are a young market. They are contracts on stock reference prices with no expiry, traded on crypto venues. If they attract the same persistent long bias that crypto perpetuals have shown, they will produce a funding stream that is not correlated to bitcoin's. That is the wager, and it is a wager, because there is not yet a long history of funding rates on these instruments to underwrite it.

The structural questions

Delta neutrality depends on being able to hold the offsetting leg. In crypto, Ethena holds spot bitcoin or ether against the short. In equities, the long leg is either a tokenized share, a cash-settled instrument, or a position held with a counterparty, and each of those carries a different custody and credit profile. Which route Ethena takes will determine what USDe holders are actually exposed to.

Liquidity is the second question. The crypto perpetuals market absorbs billions of dollars of short interest without moving funding much. Equity perpetual venues are far smaller. Routing a meaningful share of a $4bn backing book into them, over 12 to 24 months, means either those markets grow substantially or Ethena becomes a dominant participant in them, which changes the funding rate it is trying to earn.

Separately, the token

Ethena's research team has proposed routing 95% of net protocol revenue into buybacks of the ENA token, alongside changes to venture investor unlock schedules, The Defiant and CoinDesk reported. ENA rose 21.9% on the day, The Defiant reported. That is a governance and tokenomics matter, distinct from the mechanics of what backs USDe, and the two should not be read as the same announcement.

What to watch

The named exchange partners are the first real information. They will reveal which equity perpetual venues Ethena considers deep enough and creditworthy enough to hold a portion of a multi-billion-dollar backing book, and that is a shorter and more informative list than any roadmap.

After that, the disclosure to watch is composition. Ethena publishes what backs USDe. The share of collateral sitting in real-world asset positions, and the funding those positions actually earn, will settle whether the 12-to-24-month expectation was a forecast or an ambition.