New Ethena Treasury Company Raises $360 Million, Plans Nasdaq Listing

Ethena Labs — the developer of the synthetic dollar protocol with a total value locked (TVL) of $7.5 billion — has announced the formation of a new Ethena (ENA)-focused treasury company, StableCoinX Inc. The ENA treasury company has raised a total of $360 million and plans to list its stock on Nasdaq under the symbol USDE.

The capital raise, according to an Ethena Labs post on X (formerly Twitter) today, July 21, includes $260 million in cash, which will be used to buy locked ENA from a subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation, and $60 million contribution of ENA from the foundation. The cash will be used by the subsidiary to purchase ENA on the open market.

Starting today, about $5 million worth of ENA will be bought daily over the next six weeks. At current prices, $260 million represents about 8% of ENA’s circulating supply, the post said.

“Importantly, the Ethena Foundation has the right to veto any sales of $ENA by StableCoinX at its sole discretion. Ideally, tokens will never be sold with a sole focus on accumulation,” Ethena Labs stated in the post.

StableCoinX’s treasury strategy focuses on a “deliberate, multi‑year capital allocation” approach designed to help the company benefit from the growing demand for digital dollars, while increasing the amount of ENA tokens held per share “to the benefit of shareholders,” the X post reads.

“The Ethena Foundation’s mandate is to safeguard Ethena’s longevity and decentralisation,” said Marc Piano, director at the Ethena Foundation, in a press release announcing the deal. Piano continued:

ENA is currently trading at around $0.54 – up 13% on the day, with the rally from near $0.40 beginning over the weekend, before the official announcement went live, per CoinGecko data. This also marks a 57% increase over the past week, suggesting that some insiders may have anticipated the news.

ENA 7-day price chart. Source: CoinGecko

News of StablecoinX’s treasury strategy comes as the broader stablecoin market has been on a growth streak for nearly two years. The Defiant has previously reported that stablecoins now account for roughly one-third of decentralized finance-generated revenue.

Meanwhile, the overall market capitalization of stablecoins now exceeds $261 billion, up nearly 3% over the past week, due to expanding user adoption. Tether’s USDT holds a 62% market share, with a market capitalization of $162 billion, per DefiLlama.

A recent report from Animoca Brands showed that the stocks of public companies adopting altcoin treasury strategies tend to surge, but the altcoins themselves don’t show the same price action.