Ethena and Binance Launch Equity Perpetual Contracts with Tokenized Stocks

Ethena and Binance have launched equity perpetual contracts that use tokenized stocks as collateral for market-neutral trading strategies. This marks a significant expansion of Ethena's basis-trade playbook, which now extends beyond crypto assets to listed U.S. equities.

The new product pairs tokenized stocks, issued through Binance's bStocks program, with offsetting short positions in Binance's equity perpetual contracts. The gains or losses on the tokenized spot side are meant to be balanced out by the derivatives leg, leaving the funding rate between the two markets as the main source of return.

Binance's equity perpetual open interest has exceeded $2.9 billion, and this year it has been expanding at a 105% compound monthly rate. Ethena's Risk Committee had already approved a framework for adding tokenized equity basis trades to the protocol's allocation strategy before this launch.