{"id":12528,"date":"2026-08-28T21:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T21:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=12528"},"modified":"2026-08-28T21:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T21:38:15","slug":"ethena-is-targeting-the-120-trillion-wall-street-stock-market-to-hunt-yields-5x-higher-than-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=12528","title":{"rendered":"Ethena is targeting the $120 trillion Wall Street stock market to hunt yields 5x higher than Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ethena is expanding USDe into equity perpetual-basis trades, targeting funding yields more than five times higher than Bitcoin\u2019s as the synthetic dollar looks to recover from its 2026 contraction.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 28, Ethena revealed plans to extend the basis strategy behind USDe into equity perpetual futures, where open interest has surged to about $6.2 billion from less than $1 billion in March. Funding rates in this market have averaged about 14% on Hyperliquid and 17.5% on Binance in recent months.<\/p>\n

By comparison, Bitcoin perpetual funding averaged 2.2% this year through Aug. 11, down from 4.9% in 2025 and 11% in 2024.<\/p>\n

Ethena founder Guy Young said equity and commodity-linked perpetuals have become one of the protocol\u2019s biggest potential growth markets.<\/p>\n

According to him, real-world asset perpetual volume exceeded half of crypto volume on Hyperliquid last month, while aggregate RWA perpetual volume on Binance reached roughly twice the volume of BTC-USDT, he said.<\/p>\n

Young expects open interest and trading volume in the sector to surpass crypto perpetuals across major venues within roughly two years. For Ethena, the expansion increases the pool of underlying assets available to its basis strategy from a crypto market worth about $2.5 trillion to more than $120 trillion of equities.<\/p>\n

The protocol plans to start deploying into equity-basis positions over the coming weeks through venues where it already executes crypto trades, using the same infrastructure developed for USDe.<\/p>\n

Young said Ethena had delayed entering the market at scale until equity perpetuals developed deeper liquidity and enough trading history to assess their behavior.<\/p>\n

The expansion comes as USDe remains near $4.04 billion, less than one-third of its roughly $15 billion peak last year.<\/p>\n

Falling crypto yields are forcing Ethena to find a new engine<\/h2>\n

Ethena\u2019s push toward equities follows a sharp deterioration in the trade that originally helped USDe scale, as falling crypto funding rates have made traditional basis positions increasingly unattractive.<\/p>\n

USDe was launched around a delta-neutral structure that paired crypto collateral with short derivatives positions. When traders paid positive funding to maintain leveraged long positions, Ethena could collect those payments while the opposing exposures limited sensitivity to swings in Bitcoin and Ethereum prices.<\/p>\n

That strategy performed best when demand for crypto leverage was high.<\/p>\n

However, the economics behind that trade have weakened considerably this year because of poor market conditions.<\/p>\n

Data from the Ethena Transparency Board shows that crypto basis positions had declined to around 13% of USDe’s backing as of press time.<\/p>\n

Ethena has filled the gap by moving more of USDe\u2019s backing into other markets.<\/p>\n

DeFi lending accounted for about $1.26 billion, or 30.8% of reserves, while liquid stablecoins represented another 32%. Real-world assets made up 12.3%, and institutional lending accounted for 11.8%.<\/p>\n

Those allocations were generating yields ranging from about 3.1% for DeFi lending to as much as 7% for institutional credit.<\/p>\n

\"Ethena\"Ethena
Ethena’s USDe Backing (Source: Ethena Transparency Board)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The changes mean the crypto basis book that defined USDe at launch now contributes only a small part of its returns.<\/p>\n

Equity perpetuals offer Ethena a way to restore basis trading without depending on another surge in Bitcoin and Ethereum leverage.<\/p>\n