Ethena is expanding USDe’s backing strategy into tokenized U.S. equities and equity perpetual futures by pairing Binance bStocks as the tokenized spot collateral with short positions in equity perpetuals on the same exchange. The move, approved within a Risk Committee framework, shifts part of the protocol’s delta-neutral basis trade beyond crypto markets and aims to capture the funding spread between spot and perpetual markets rather than directional stock moves. Ethena called it the most significant expansion of USDe’s funding mechanism since launch.
Ethena cited Binance figures showing more than $2.9 billion of open interest in equity perpetuals and an equity basis that averaged 3.56% annualized over the past six months. Binance’s bStocks, backed 1:1 by securities held by BTech Holdings Limited, had grown to roughly $610.6 million by August. Ethena expects the equity perpetual opportunity to eventually become significantly larger than the comparable crypto perpetual market and will deploy tokenized spot positions alongside corresponding perpetual hedges inside its approved risk framework.
USDe’s backing mix has already diversified beyond crypto basis trades to include DeFi lending, stablecoin liquidity, tokenized real-world assets and institutional lending. Earlier protocol data noted crypto basis positions of about $39 million (approximately 1%), DeFi lending around 46%, liquid stablecoins 35%, tokenized RWAs 11.2%, and institutional lending roughly $310 million (6.9%). The Defiant added that the rollout pairs bStocks with short equity perpetuals while eligible hedged accounts receive lower auto-deleveraging priority, reflecting operational and risk-management details of the equity-basis rollout.