Ethena shifts USDe backing to AAA-rated CLOs
Ethena (ENA)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
Cryptobriefing.com reports that Ethena is replacing crypto basis trades with tokenized institutional-grade assets for its synthetic dollar, USDe. The protocol allocated $200 million to the Janus Henderson Anemoy AAA CLO Fund, known as JAAA, in June 2026 via a partnership with Centrifuge on Solana. Ethena’s Risk Committee approved this position with a cap of approximately $310 million, allowing for further deployment.
By mid-2026, real-world assets accounted for roughly 11% of USDe’s total backing, up from a reliance on perpetual futures. The US AAA CLO market is valued at $500 to $600 billion and offers yields tied to SOFR with a quarterly mean spread of about 61 basis points. Founder Guy Young described the expansion as a move toward low-duration, lower-risk instruments to reduce dependency on crypto market volatility.
Perpetual futures positions had dropped to about 11% of USDe’s backing by April 2026. Further integrations with STAC and Securitize have expanded holdings beyond the initial JAAA allocation. Partnerships with Anchorage Digital and Coinbase Asset Management reinforce the shift toward institutional investors. As of September 2026, USDe’s circulating supply was approximately $4.7 billion, with no AAA-rated CLO tranche ever experiencing a principal loss.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ENA, measured when this story was written up on 17 September 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
ENA is trading at $0.1489 with a 1-hour buy ratio of 55.5% and a 4-hour buy ratio of 51.5%, indicating short-term buying pressure. This contrasts with the 24-hour buy ratio of 49.5%, suggesting that aggressive buying is building in the immediate term but has been offset over the longer day. The 1-hour volume delta is positive at +$328,086, while the 4-hour delta is +$182,769, showing net inflows in recent hours. However, the 24-hour volume delta is -$345,372, indicating that net selling has dominated the full day. A positive volume delta means buyers are executing more aggressively than sellers, while a negative delta indicates sellers are in control. The flow shows a recent shift toward buying after a day of net outflows.
The latest daily buy ratio of 42.7% sits at the 1st percentile of the last 324 days, against a median of 49.0% - among the weakest buying days it has had.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ENA, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, the average buy ratio was 49.1%, compared to today's 24-hour ratio of 49.5%, a difference of just 0.4 percentage points. This indicates that today's buying activity is roughly in line with the weekly average, making it an ordinary day for the coin. Volume was 1.14x the average, showing slightly higher activity than usual. The 8-day volume delta total was -$3,077,901, with a price change of -2.1% over eight days. This context suggests that despite the recent short-term buying spike, the broader weekly trend remains net negative.