Nice write-up on
@ethena from someone that gets it.
“ENA trading below a billion while sitting on top of one of the most integrated synthetic‑dollar engines in crypto looks, to me, like a discount worth underwriting. If and when the market cycle turns, I’d rather already be holding the thing that Wall Street and DeFi are quietly building around than scrambling to buy it into a vertical candle.”
I’ll put it more simply (but you should read Savvy’s post!):
1. The APY offered in sUSDe is cyclical due to the underlying basis trade where the short leg gets paid more in a bull cycle, but less (or negative) in a bear cycle. When the basis trade is no longer generating attractive returns (such as today), $USDe backing sits in cash (ie other liquid stables) and simply generates t-bill rates.
2. USDe circulating supply is highly correlated to the APY that sUSDe offers. It’s simply natural for market participants to seek the highest yielding / lowest risk opportunities in the market. In crypto bull markets, it means USDe circulating supply should grow significantly, and conversely, in bear markets it will, as we have seen, decline in circulation.
3. The value of $ENA itself is highly correlated to USDe circulating supply. That correlation will move closer to 1 once the fee switch is activated. Unfortunately the fee switch itself can’t be turned on until USDe circulating supply reaches scale and APYs on sUSDe are materially above t-bills. But the facts are correct: the more USDe circulating supply, the greater the probability of fee switch activation, the more correlation between USDe supply and ENA price moves to 1.
4. That means if crypto is up, sUSDe APYs are up, USDe supply is up, and ENA is up. Since the crypto market itself is highly correlated to just $BTC prices, betting on ENA is in many ways just a higher vol proxy to expressing a long Bitcoin thesis! If you love Bitcoin, you should really love ENA.
5. The point is, ENA at its lows is not a reflection of a broken ecosystem or a broken token, but a reflection of where we are in the cycle. If you believe the crypto market will come back then as
@sav_gupta put it, “I’d rather already be holding the thing that Wall Street and DeFi are quietly building around than scrambling to buy it into a vertical candle.” That’s exactly what
@stablecoin_x is doing with its treasury deployed into ENA. At an ENA price of $0.076, that treasury is worth $9.59 per $USDE share today.
Yes, you read that right, $9.59 vs $USDE close of $2.03. 👀