Standard Chartered Sees Ethena's Stablecoin and Token Prices Skyrocketing

Standard Chartered, a British multinational bank, has initiated coverage of Ethena's ENA token and USDe stablecoin in a research report. The bank forecasts that Ethena's USDe stablecoin supply will grow eightfold to $40 billion by the end of 2028.

According to the report, declining returns from USDe's traditional crypto basis trade have pushed Ethena to expand into DeFi and institutional lending, real-world assets, and basis trades tied to equities and commodities. These new sources currently generate a blended yield of 5.2%, giving USDe more room to scale.

Standard Chartered also expects the broader market for tokenized assets to grow from about $350 billion today to $4 trillion by the end of 2028, expanding the pool of assets Ethena could use to generate yield. The bank forecasts that ENA will outperform Bitcoin and Ether through 2028.

ENA was trading at about $0.27 on Wednesday, up roughly 28% over the past week and 77% over the past month. Standard Chartered estimates that if USDe reaches its $40 billion forecast and ENA's price remains unchanged, annual buybacks could amount to roughly 23% of ENA's circulating market capitalization.