Ethena's USDe to land on Coinbase next week, ENA jumps 28%

Ethena has partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase to power their U.S. dollar savings product. The integration will involve Ethena's USDe and is set to go live next week, according to founder Guy Young. He added, "The upcoming integration next week will be the first time Ethena products are available for their (Coinbase) 100m+ user base." According to Young, the deal will involve USDe leveraging Coinbase's idle balances and direct yield on them.

USDe is largely positioned as a stablecoin, but in practice it functions more as a yield product that competes directly with Sky Dollar (USDS, formerly DAI) or Ondo Finance's USDY. Traditionally, it has played the role of a U.S. Treasury bill that pays interest, though one held together with delta-neutral strategies and a few prayers.

Since the crypto downturn began last October, Ethena's TVL has dropped roughly 3x from nearly $15 billion to a low of $4.2 billion. The slump was primarily driven by USDe redemptions following the Binance-driven liquidation cascade, a sequence the protocol would probably prefer to forget.

The bear market brought low funding rates, effectively grounding its delta-neutral strategy to a halt. Even rivals offered better yields with less risk, which did not exactly help demand for USDe.

As part of a broader pivot, Ethena decided to venture beyond pure crypto and target booming tokenized assets and other alternatives to scale its yield-generating strategy.

That said, Coinbase disclosed that it purchased ENA, the native token of the Ethena protocol, in the open market as part of the deal. Lately, Coinbase deals have triggered bullish rallies, similar to the move seen with HYPE after the Hyperliquid USDC deal. By the same playbook, ENA mooned nearly 28% after the update, defying broader market contraction.

The altcoin surged from $0.08 to $0.10, but remained just shy of the 50-day SMA (white), which has acted as both resistance and support in the past.

If ENA bulls falter at the 50-day SMA, a rejection at the level could drag the altcoin back to the range-low near $0.80.

On the contrary, flipping the 50-day SMA into support could allow bulls to use the level as a springboard toward the range-high at $0.14.