Ethena is extending USDe’s yield sources beyond crypto perpetuals and into the U.S. stock market. The project said it has added Binance bStocks tokenized equities to USDe’s underlying allocation strategy and is shorting the corresponding Binance equity perpetual contracts at the same time to create a delta-neutral basis trade.
That means Ethena is not making a direct bet on U.S. stocks going up. The goal is to earn from the funding rate and basis between tokenized spot equities and perpetual futures. By Ethena’s description, this is one of the biggest cross-asset expansions of USDe’s capital framework since launch.
Long tokenized stocks, short equity perpetuals
The structure is straightforward: buy Binance bStocks, short the matching stock perpetuals, hedge out directional price risk, and collect basis and funding income.
A framework published by the Ethena Risk Committee in August described the trade as 「long tokenized stock, short equity perpetual」, rather than a directional equity investment.
Using NVIDIA as an example, if Ethena holds tokenized NVIDIA and opens an equal-sized short in NVIDIA perpetuals, gains or losses from stock price moves would in theory mostly offset each other. The main return would come from funding payments made by longs to shorts in the perpetual market.
This is structurally similar to USDe’s earlier model of pairing BTC and ETH spot or staked assets with short crypto perpetuals. The difference is that the underlying market now extends from crypto into equities.
Binance equity perpetual open interest has passed $2.9 billion
Ethena said the strategy is being launched now because liquidity in the equity perpetual market has expanded quickly.
According to the latest figures cited by Ethena, total open interest in Binance equity perpetual contracts has exceeded $2.9 billion. The year-to-date monthly compound growth rate is about 105%, and the average annualized basis across related stock trades over the past six months was about 3.56%.
Earlier, on Aug. 26, the Ethena Risk Committee measured one-sided open interest in Binance’s equity perpetual market at about $2.14 billion. At that point, 17 names had already passed its liquidity and historical data thresholds, including NVIDIA, Tesla, Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Strategy, SPY, and QQQ. In roughly a month, the market’s available hedging capacity expanded again.
The tokenized stock market is also growing fast
Tokenized equities are no longer just a concept. Binance Research said that by early September, active tokenized stock market capitalization had risen about 314% this year to $4 billion. Monthly trading volume increased from about $237 million in January to about $7.9 billion in August.
Trading share for newer products such as bStocks and Robinhood also increased quickly, a sign that liquidity is shifting from simple issuance of stock tokens toward actual trading, collateral use, and derivatives activity. For Ethena, that broadens the set of markets available for basis trades beyond BTC, ETH, and other crypto perpetuals.
USDe is near a $5 billion scale
The expansion comes as USDe circulation is close to $5 billion. CoinGecko data dated Sept. 25 showed USDe with a market capitalization of about $4.897 billion and a price near $1.
Ethena’s proof-of-reserves data showed that as of Sept. 18, USDe supply stood at about $4.740 billion against roughly $4.742 billion in underlying assets. Including the Reserve Fund, the total was about $4.804 billion.
In that context, the main significance of the new equity basis strategy is not that USDe becomes a stock stablecoin. It adds another source of return for an asset pool approaching $5 billion, one that does not fully rely on the funding cycle in crypto markets.
Reducing dependence on crypto funding
USDe’s yield has long depended heavily on crypto perpetual markets. When BTC and ETH are in bullish conditions and leveraged long demand is strong, positive funding rates can generate meaningful returns. When markets weaken and funding falls toward zero or turns negative, returns from Ethena’s basis trade can decline as well.
The equity perpetual market offers another return curve that may not move in lockstep with BTC and ETH. Ethena founder Guy Young called this the 「most important expansion of the underlying yield mechanism」 since USDe launched, and said that as global equity markets move on-chain, the opportunity in equity perpetual trading could eventually exceed the current crypto perpetual market.
Risks include market closures, issuer credit, and venue concentration
The Ethena Risk Committee also listed several risks tied to the strategy: price index dislocations while stock markets are closed, credit risk from tokenized stock issuers, corporate actions and dividend handling, and concentration risk from relying on a single trading venue.
One issue stands out. U.S. equities are closed for a large portion of each week, but equity perpetuals can trade 24/7. When the underlying stock market is shut, price discovery in perpetuals and tokenized stocks may depend more heavily on crypto-native liquidity. If prices diverge sharply in a short period, the short leg could even face liquidation before the cash equity market reopens.
Ethena said it has proposed extra weekend margin requirements and position limits as risk controls.
A structural shift in USDe’s yield model
The broader change is that USDe’s underlying yield model is moving toward a cross-asset structure. If the equity perpetual market keeps expanding, USDe’s return profile could increasingly resemble a portfolio spanning crypto, equities, tokenized fixed income, and other real-world assets, using long-short hedging to reduce price risk while earning basis and funding income.