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| By Mark Gough |
Coinbase may have just given one of crypto's largest yield protocols its biggest growth catalyst yet.
This week, Coinbase Ventures revealed it had purchased Ethena (ENA, “B+”) tokens directly from the open market.
Not through a private funding round. Not through a venture allocation. Straight from the market.
According to Ethena, it's the first time Coinbase Ventures has ever taken that approach with a token investment.
The purchase comes just days before Ethena products are expected to become available to Coinbase's massive user base. If adoption follows, this could mark the moment one of DeFi's most successful yield products finally breaks out beyond the crypto-native crowd.
What Ethena Actually Does
Ethena runs what is essentially a large, hedged portfolio. It holds crypto assets such as Ethereum (ETH, “B+”) and Bitcoin (BTC, “A-”) while maintaining short futures positions against them.
That means the protocol isn't heavily exposed to market movements: A rally helps one side of the trade. A sell-off helps the other.
The real objective isn't price speculation. It's earning yield while keeping overall market exposure relatively contained.
The yield comes from that structure.
Perpetual futures markets use funding rates to keep contract prices aligned with spot markets. In bullish environments, traders holding long positions often pay traders holding shorts.
Because Ethena maintains large short positions, it can collect those funding payments. Combined with staking rewards, this helps generate yield for sUSDe, the yield-bearing version of Ethena’s stablecoin, USDe.
Think of it as a crypto-native savings product that generates yield from market activity rather than traditional banking.
Why the Coinbase Deal Is a Big Deal
Under the partnership, Coinbase will act as a key custodian, wallet provider and perpetual futures trading venue for Ethena. Ethena's synthetic dollar, USDe, is also expected to become available across parts of the Coinbase ecosystem.
The logic here is pretty straightforward.
Yan Liberman, managing partner at Delphi Ventures, said the partnership could help connect Coinbase's roughly $19 billion USDC ecosystem with Ethena's yield-generating infrastructure.
If sUSDe yields remain above standard USDC rates, Coinbase could offer more attractive stablecoin products. For its part, Ethena gains access to deeper, cheaper funding.
In simple terms, Coinbase gets access to a yield product that could help it compete more aggressively for stablecoin deposits, though that does hinge on how the CLARITY Act pans out (more on that in a bit).
And Ethena — previously relegated to DeFi only — gains exposure to one of the world's largest retail crypto user bases.
According to DefiLlama, Ethena currently manages roughly $5.4 billion in total value locked and has generated approximately $972 million in cumulative fees since launching in 2023.
The protocol has already shown it can operate at scale. What it hasn't had until now is meaningful access to mainstream users.
The CLARITY Act Connection
Ethena founder Guy Young directly linked the partnership to the evolving U.S. regulatory environment.
As quoted by The Block, he stated …
"Given the evolving nature of the CLARITY Act, we expect further potential tailwinds for on-chain native products like USDe from idle balances on exchanges, and Ethena is well-positioned to support this transition."
The bill is still making its way through Congress, so investors shouldn't assume anything is imminent.
That said, if exchanges eventually get the green light to offer more yield-bearing stablecoin products, Ethena looks well-positioned. Much of the infrastructure needed for that future already exists today.
Technical Picture
ENA’s chart is starting to look more interesting as well.
Since peaking above $1.30 shortly after launch, ENA has spent more than a year trapped inside a broad falling wedge. The token remains down more than 90% from its all-time high, but the pace of selling has slowed considerably in recent months.
In that time, the price has stabilized around the 10-15-cent range.
The Coinbase announcement has already sparked a strong reaction from the market. ENA is up roughly 38% over the past 24 hours, putting the price near 11 cents, with trading volume surging above $600 million.
One strong day doesn't confirm a trend reversal. And the upper limit of ENA’s range still needs to be challenged and broken.
But this bullish momentum does suggest sentiment may finally be starting to shift.
Which means until we see that breakout, the pattern remains a potential setup rather than a confirmed reversal.
That’s the potential. Here’s the risk ...
The Bear Case
USDe has been shrinking for months. Assets peaked at roughly $15 billion near the October 2025 market top and have since fallen to around $5.3 billion as yields have come down and speculative activity has cooled.
That's not necessarily a problem on its own. But it does show how dependent the model can be on strong market conditions.
Yield depends heavily on perpetual futures funding rates remaining positive. During prolonged bear markets, funding can turn negative. Enough to reduce or even eliminate much of the protocol's yield advantage.
That wouldn’t break the project’s model, per se, but it does mean investors need to account for how wildly returns can vary depending on market conditions.
There is also execution risk.
Details surrounding the Coinbase launch remain scarce. Neither Coinbase nor Ethena has publicly outlined exactly how the product will work.
Natrually, this has sparked speculation on whether it will involve direct USDe exposure, sUSDe, or an entirely different structure.
Bottom Line
There’s no doubt that Ethena’s partnership with Coinbase reignited bullish momentum around the project.
After all, Coinbase didn't need to buy ENA tokens to launch a savings product with Ethena. The decision to make an open-market purchase suggests Coinbase sees value in the protocol itself, not just the infrastructure it provides.
The technical set up also supports a potential trend reversal if momentum continues.
For investors willing to accept the risk, the combination of improving fundamentals and a deeply depressed chart makes ENA one of the more interesting turnaround stories in the sector.
That said, Ethena is still facing notable headwinds.
Which is why I’ll be watching the June 9-10 launch closely.
If the product gains traction inside the Coinbase ecosystem, it could become one of the biggest mainstream distribution events DeFi has seen to date.
For those of us who prefer a conservative approach, ENA remains well below its all-time high. So, if adoption follows the launch, there is still plenty of room for the market to reassess the opportunity.
Best,
Mark Gough
P.S. While I’ll be watching Ethena’s Coinbase launch, there’s another early-stage opportunity my colleague Chris Graebe is eyeing.
Like crypto, the private equity space is exciting. It’s also risk heavy. As a startup investing specialist, Chris knows how to separate the noise from the picks with real potential.
And the one that just caught his eye? It’s a space play with real momentum. And it’s poised to benefit from SpaceX’s own highly anticipated IPO.
To learn more about it, and how you can be an Alpha Round investor, click here.
