Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Ethena is expanding USDe’s backing strategy to include tokenized U.S. equities and equity perpetual futures.
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The protocol will use Binance-listed bStocks as spot collateral and equity perpetuals to hedge price exposure.
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Binance equity perpetuals have accumulated more than $2.9 billion in open interest.
Ethena is expanding the basis-trading strategy supporting its USDe synthetic dollar into traditional financial markets by incorporating tokenized U.S. equities and equity perpetual futures available through Binance.
The move represents the largest expansion of USDe’s funding model since its launch, according to Ethena Labs founder Guy Young. It also gives the protocol another potential source of returns while reducing its reliance on basis trades involving only crypto assets.
Ethena plans to use bStocks as tokenized spot collateral and Binance’s equity perpetual contracts to hedge the associated market exposure. The structure has already received approval under a framework established by the Ethena Risk Committee for tokenized equity basis trades.
How Ethena’s Equity Basis Trade Works
Ethena has historically supported USDe through a delta-neutral strategy involving cryptocurrency spot assets and offsetting derivatives positions.
Under a typical basis trade, Ethena gains exposure to an asset through the spot market while opening a short derivatives position of approximately the same size. The short position is designed to offset changes in the spot asset’s price, limiting the strategy’s directional market exposure.
Returns can then come from the difference between spot and derivatives prices or from funding payments made by traders holding leveraged positions.
The equity-based version will follow a similar structure. Ethena will use bStocks for the spot side of the trade and Binance equity perpetual futures for the corresponding hedge.
BTech Holdings Limited issues bStocks, which represent an interest in securities held by the company. Eligible users can convert the tokens into the underlying securities through Binance, subject to applicable laws and platform requirements.
By pairing these tokenized equities with short equity perpetual positions, Ethena intends to capture the available basis while reducing its exposure to movements in the underlying stock prices.
The structure is designed to be market-neutral, but it is not risk-free. The strategy remains exposed to factors such as changes in funding rates, differences between spot and derivatives prices, market liquidity, counterparty arrangements, and the operational risks associated with tokenized securities.
Expansion Diversifies USDe’s Funding Model
Ethena’s decision extends a model that it has already used across digital assets. The protocol has relied on spot crypto positions and corresponding derivatives hedges to support USDe and generate revenue from funding markets.
Binance integrated USDe across its platform in 2025, including support for the synthetic dollar as collateral in futures and perpetual markets. The closer connection between the two platforms now provides Ethena with access to Binance’s growing tokenized-stock and traditional-finance derivatives ecosystem.
“This is the most significant expansion of USDe’s funding mechanism since we started,” Young said.
He argued that global equities represent a substantially larger addressable market than cryptocurrencies. As a growing share of stock-market activity moves onto blockchain-based infrastructure, Ethena expects the opportunity to diversify USDe’s backing and funding sources to expand.
USDe currently has approximately $4.9 billion in circulating supply, according to The Block’s data dashboard. At that scale, expanding the range of eligible assets and trading strategies could help Ethena avoid depending too heavily on funding conditions in a limited number of crypto markets.
Funding rates can fluctuate considerably, especially when sentiment changes or leveraged positions become concentrated on one side of the market. Adding equity-based trades could provide an alternative source of returns when opportunities in crypto derivatives become less attractive.
Binance Equity Perpetuals Gain Traction
The expansion comes as Binance records rapid growth in equity-linked derivatives. According to data supplied by Ethena, Binance has more than $2.9 billion in open interest across its equity perpetual futures. Open interest represents the total value of unsettled derivatives contracts and can indicate the amount of capital committed to a market.
Ethena said equity-perpetual open interest has expanded at a compound monthly rate of 105% this year. The equity basis, meanwhile, averaged an annualized 3.56% over the previous six months.
That return is lower than some of the yields periodically available in highly speculative crypto markets. However, equity markets offer a much larger pool of underlying assets, potentially giving Ethena more room to scale its strategy without concentrating exposure in a small number of tokens.
Binance opened access to more than 7,000 U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds for eligible users outside the United States in June. The exchange introduced bStocks later that month, further connecting its crypto infrastructure with traditional securities.
The exchange’s traditional-finance perpetual futures generated approximately $433.4 billion in trading volume during August. Equity-linked contracts accounted for roughly $342.9 billion of that total, highlighting the growing demand for continuous, leveraged exposure to stock markets.
Binance Head of Exchange and Trading Shunyet Jan said rising liquidity and expanding use cases are driving adoption of both bStocks and equity perpetuals.
Ethena’s participation could deepen that trend by bringing one of the digital-asset industry’s largest systematic trading strategies into the market.
It also illustrates how tokenized securities and crypto-native derivatives can be combined to create financial products that operate across traditional and blockchain-based markets.
Ethena expects the equity-perpetual opportunity eventually to become significantly larger than the crypto-perpetual market. That expectation rests on the enormous size of global stock markets and the potential migration of more securities and trading activity onto blockchain infrastructure.
