Ethena Extends USDe Basis Trade Into Tokenized US Equities via Binance bStocks

Ethena is taking the basis trading engine behind USDe into the U.S. stock market. The protocol has added tokenized American equities and equity perpetual futures to the backing strategy of its synthetic dollar, extending a funding model that was previously built around crypto derivatives into listed shares for the first time.

According to a statement shared with crypto.media, Ethena will use Binance bStocks as the tokenized spot leg of the trade, while offsetting short positions will sit in Binance equity perpetual futures. The structure was cleared in advance by the Ethena Risk Committee, which approved a dedicated framework for tokenized equity basis trades before any allocation went live.

How the equity basis trade works

The setup mirrors the delta neutral approach Ethena has run in crypto markets since launch. The protocol holds the spot asset, in this case a tokenized claim on a listed stock, and shorts the corresponding perpetual contract. If the underlying price rises, the short loses while the spot gains, and vice versa. What remains is the funding rate and basis between the two markets, which becomes the yield that helps back USDe.

For Ethena, the attraction is scale and diversification. Binance currently reports more than 2.9 billion USD in open interest across its equity perpetual futures, and figures provided by Ethena show that open interest in these contracts has compounded at roughly 105% per month this year. The equity basis itself has averaged an annualized 3.56% over the past six months.

“This is the most significant expansion of USDe’s funding mechanism since we started,” Ethena Labs founder Guy Young said. “Equities trade in the hundreds of trillions of dollars globally, and as more of that market moves onchain, we see a substantial opportunity to continue diversifying our backing strategy.”

bStocks provide the tokenized spot leg

Binance’s bStocks are tokenized interests in securities held by issuer BTech Holdings Limited. Eligible users can convert between stock and tokenized form without conversion fees where local law permits, and the tokens trade around the clock, unlike the underlying listed shares.

The product line launched in June with tokenized versions of Nvidia, Tesla, Circle, Micron and Sandisk. Demand grew quickly enough that by August the value of outstanding bStocks had reached roughly 610.6 million USD, placing Binance ahead of xStocks as the second largest tokenized stock issuer tracked by Token Terminal, behind Ondo Finance. Token Terminal’s overall tokenized stock dataset stood near 2.7 billion USD in August, up from roughly 80 million USD a year earlier.

Shunyet Jan, Binance Head of Exchange and Trading, framed the Ethena allocation as evidence that liquidity around tokenized stocks and equity perpetuals is maturing. “Ethena runs one of the largest systematic strategies in digital assets, and their expansion into tokenized securities and equity perps is a clear sign of how the convergence of crypto and traditional assets will surface new opportunities,” Jan said.

USDe’s backing keeps diversifying

The equity allocation is the latest step in a broader reshaping of what stands behind USDe. The original design leaned on crypto basis trades, but the portfolio now spreads across DeFi lending, liquid stablecoins, tokenized real world assets and institutional credit.

In early July, crypto basis positions accounted for only about 39 million USD, or 1%, of the backing portfolio. DeFi lending represented roughly 46%, liquid stablecoins 35%, and tokenized real world assets 11.2%. Institutional lending has since expanded after Ethena and FalconX launched a 1 billion USD facility in August, letting assets backing USDe finance overcollateralized loans to institutional borrowers through a special purpose vehicle. That channel represented roughly 310 million USD, or 6.9%, of backing in early July.

Adding equities gives the protocol a way to run its signature basis strategy in a market it expects will eventually dwarf the crypto one. Ethena says it believes the opportunity in equity perpetuals will become significantly larger than the crypto perpetual market as tokenization deepens.

Binance’s TradFi buildout supplies both sides

The trade is only possible because Binance has spent 2026 assembling both layers of the equity stack. In June the exchange opened access to more than 7,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs for eligible non-U.S. users, with fractional purchases starting at 5 USD and funding available in USDT, USDC, BNB and selected cryptocurrencies. bStocks followed later that month as the tokenized layer.

Derivatives volume has grown alongside the spot offering. Binance’s TradFi perpetual futures generated roughly 433.4 billion USD of trading volume in August, with equity linked contracts accounting for about 342.9 billion USD of the total, according to figures reported by The Block. The exchange also says its Direct Stocks service crossed 1 billion USD in user-held U.S. equities within 30 days of launch, with trading volume approaching 3 billion USD over the same period.

Binance Research estimates tokenized stocks grew 422% during 2026 as the wider tokenized real world asset market expanded, and previously calculated that TradFi linked perpetual contracts already represented roughly 10% of stablecoin trading volume earlier this year.

For now, the equity deployment will operate inside the risk limits set by Ethena’s Risk Committee, with tokenized spot positions hedged by corresponding perpetual shorts. The question investors will watch is how much of USDe’s backing migrates toward equity basis over time, and whether the 3.56% annualized basis holds as more systematic capital chases the same trade.

Market snapshot at 12:00 UTC on Sept. 25, 2026: BTC 84,606 USD, ETH 2,716.64 USD, SOL 120.81 USD (CoinGecko).