Ethena backs USDe stablecoin with Binance tokenized stocks

Ethena has started backing its $4.9 billion USDe stablecoin with tokenized Binance stock positions, extending the same funding-rate arbitrage it has run on Bitcoin, Ether and Solana into equity markets for the first time. The expansion, which Ethena says could eventually dwarf the $15 billion crypto perpetuals opportunity it captured last cycle, comes as USDe’s supply sits well below its October 2025 peak.

• Ethena began backing USDe with Binance’s tokenized bStocks on Friday (September 25, 2026), per its own announcement.
• Binance’s equity basis trade has averaged roughly 11% annualized over the past six months, according to Ethena.
• Seventeen of Binance’s 67 pairs qualified for the strategy, including Nvidia, Tesla and SpaceX.

• $4.9B USDe’s current supply, the base being extended into equities
• 11% Binance equity basis trade’s six-month annualized average return
• $14.8B USDe’s peak supply on October 4, 2025, versus today’s total
• $250B July equity perpetual volume, of which Binance handled 76%

Ethena, the decentralized finance protocol behind USDe, said it began backing the synthetic dollar with Binance’s tokenized stocks on Friday (September 25, 2026), according to CryptoPotato. The move applies the delta-neutral basis trade that has underpinned USDe since launch, and that Ethena already runs on Bitcoin, Ether and Solana, to equities for the first time.

Binance’s equity basis trade has averaged 11% annualized

The mechanics mirror Ethena’s crypto strategy. The protocol buys a bStock, a token issued by Binance affiliate BTech Holdings Limited and backed one-for-one by custodied shares, then shorts the matching equity perpetual to collect the funding that leveraged longs pay.

Ethena said Binance’s equity basis has averaged about 11% annualized over the past six months. The exchange also gives eligible delta-neutral accounts, including Ethena’s, lower priority in auto-deleveraging, reducing the odds its hedge gets forcibly unwound.

Ethena announced the partnership in a post on X, calling Binance its first venue for extending the basis trade into equity perpetuals. “We expect the market opportunity size for equity perpetuals to far exceed the $15b+ of crypto perpetuals captured by Ethena last cycle,” the company wrote, framing the shift as one of the most significant additions to USDe’s collateral mix since launch.

Seventeen of Binance’s 67 stock pairs cleared Kairos Research’s bar

The allocation follows a framework Kairos Research wrote for the Ethena Risk Committee. To qualify, a name needs $25 million of perpetual open interest over 14 days, 30 days of funding history, and a matching tokenized stock listed on the same venue, among other conditions.

Seventeen of Binance’s 67 pairs passed, Nvidia, Tesla and SpaceX among them, on a venue that holds $2.14 billion of the $2.9 billion measured across four exchanges. Across 37 earnings events studied, the underlying stocks gapped 9.9% on average while Ethena’s hedged position moved just 20.3 basis points, evidence the short leg absorbs most single-name volatility.

The report flagged a caveat: carry on the approved Binance names had already halved over the prior month to about 7%, with two names turning negative. Kairos also made bStock approval conditional on a side letter with the issuer, since holders have no proprietary interest in the underlying custodied shares and every bStock contract sits behind a single upgrade key, a concentrated operational risk in the arrangement, as detailed in Ethena’s post.

Binance handled 76% of $250 billion in equity perpetual volume in July

CryptoQuant data cited in the announcement shows Binance handled 76% of the $250 billion in equity perpetual volume traded in July, well ahead of the other three exchanges in the sample. Binance’s tokenized U.S. equities, launched in June, reached $100 million in assets within two weeks, indicating fast early uptake on the exchange side of the trade.

ENA traded at $0.24 on Friday, up 12% in 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. USDe’s supply, at $4.9 billion, remains well below the $14.8 billion peak it hit on October 4, 2025, per DefiLlama.

Ethena last widened USDe’s collateral base this way in April 2024, when it added Bitcoin backing with supply at roughly $2 billion, a fraction of today’s $4.9 billion base.

The BlockWest read. For USDe holders and allocators, this trade is a bet that equity funding rates diversify collateral risk away from crypto perpetuals, not that returns are guaranteed. Kairos’s own numbers show approved-name carry halved in a month to about 7%, and the single upgrade key behind every bStock concentrates custody risk in one Binance-linked contract. Anyone treating USDe’s yield as passive income should read that fine print before the next collateral push.

Ethena has not said whether it plans to add equity perpetuals from other exchanges beyond Binance, or how it will respond if approved-name carry keeps compressing below the roughly 7% level Kairos flagged last month. The next test will be whether Binance’s tokenized stock lineup grows past its current 17 qualifying pairs as more names clear the $25 million open-interest threshold.

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