Ethena, the issuer of the roughly $4 B synthetic dollar USDe, is expanding its basis trading strategy into stock perpetual futures. The company plans to introduce its first exchange partners and launch the new strategy in the coming weeks.
The move into equities comes as yields from crypto derivatives decline. The average bitcoin funding rate fell from 11% in 2024 to 4.9% in 2025 and 2.2% from the start of 2026 through August 11. In the equity perpetual futures market, funding rates are significantly higher: the median funding rate was 13.9%, compared with 3.9% for bitcoin. At the same time, open interest in equity perpetuals rose from less than $1 B in March to $6.2 B.
Ethena sees equity perpetuals as a more attractive source of yield: rising stock prices fuel demand for leverage and, in turn, long positions. At the same time, equity funding rates are largely independent of bitcoin funding rates, which could make USDe’s yield less dependent on crypto market cycles.
The global stock market is much larger than the cryptocurrency market: its market capitalization stood at about $166.5 T in July, compared with $2.2 T for the crypto industry. Ethena expects perpetual futures tied to real-world assets to generate more yield for USDe than crypto derivatives over the next 12–24 months.
Context
On August 27, it became known that the Ethena Foundation had proposed using the protocol’s net profit to fund programmable ENA buybacks. The proposal still needs to be approved by token holders in a vote, while the risk committee has already given it a positive assessment. The size of the buyback has not been set in advance and will depend on the business’s actual profits.
The foundation also canceled monthly ENA unlocks for venture investors. Before the proposal was published, Ethena had also bought back all locked tokens from several major early investors who had been selling ENA over the previous nine months.