Ethena Targets RWA Perps to Scale USDe Yield Beyond Crypto Cycles
Ethena (ENA)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
bitcoinethereumnews.com reports that Ethena is expanding USDe’s collateral backing to include equity perpetuals, a move aimed at diversifying yield sources. The project notes that RWA tokenization perps have grown tenfold to $6 billion in Open Interest since March, with potential to reach a $150 trillion asset base. Ethena expects this RWA segment to eclipse crypto allocations in USDe’s backing within 12 to 24 months.
Currently, liquid stablecoins account for 32% of reserves, while DeFi lending holds 31%, and traditional credit from Janus Henderson makes up 12%. This new deployment marks the second wave of diversification, following the initial credit strategy. Founder Guy Young explained that the delay allowed time to study deep, liquid markets with sufficient data history.
He described the segment as one of the few remaining 100x opportunities, potentially surpassing global crypto volume in two years. USDe currently offers a 1.6% spread over short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, though it carries DeFi security risks. The strategy relies on basis trades, which historically peaked during the 2024-2025 bull run when supply hit $15 billion. However, supply contracted to $4 billion during the crypto winter, with yields slipping below 0%.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ENA, measured when this story was written up on 30 August 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
ENA is trading at $0.1596 with a 1-hour buy ratio of 53.7%, indicating immediate short-term buying pressure. This contrasts with the 4-hour buy ratio of 44.6% and the 24-hour ratio of 45.3%, suggesting that recent buying is stronger than the broader daily trend. The 1-hour volume delta is positive at $36,988, while the 4-hour and 24-hour deltas are negative at -$418,165 and -$2,486,499 respectively. A positive volume delta means buyers are initiating more market orders than sellers, while a negative delta indicates sellers are more aggressive. The 24-hour CVD closed at -$2,324,576, confirming that net selling pressure has dominated the day despite the recent intraday spike. Only 6 out of 24 hours showed net buying, highlighting that the current buying is a short-lived deviation from a bearish daily flow.
The latest daily buy ratio of 48.8% sits at the 47th percentile of the last 281 days, against a median of 49.0% - ordinary for this coin.
Twenty-four hours later
What ENA did over the 23 hours after the story broke. The market moves for its own reasons; this is what happened, not what the story caused.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ENA, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
The current 24-hour buy ratio of 45.3% is slightly below the 7-day average of 50.4%, representing a 5.1 percentage point drop. Volume over the last 24 hours is 0.30x the weekly average, indicating significantly lower trading activity than usual. Over the preceding 8 days, the price changed by only +0.8%, showing minimal movement compared to the weekly norm. The 8-day volume delta totaled +$7,926,971, contrasting with the recent 24-hour net outflow. This suggests that while the broader week saw net buying, today is an unusually quiet and net-selling day relative to the recent average.