Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is integrating Ethena Labs' USDe synthetic dollar across its platform, initially as a spot trading pair with the USDT stablecoin. Ethena Labs referred to the move as "one of our most important integrations to date," in a statement on Tuesday.
Notably, USDe will be integrated directly with Binance Earn, enabling users to earn dollar-denominated rewards payments. Binance will also offer USDe rewards, which will begin paying out at the end of the month, for using the asset as collateral in futures and perpetuals trading.
"USDe is set to completely transform trading on Binance as the first externally-developed dollar asset made available as collateral on the platform with native rewards," Ethena Labs wrote in a statement. "Similar to other exchange partnerships, Binance users will be able to earn rewards paid weekly by Binance for simply holding USDe anywhere on the exchange, including within portfolio margin on futures and perpetuals trading."
USDe is the largest non-fiat-backed dollar asset in the space with nearly $13 billion in supply. The asset earns yield and maintains its peg to the U.S. dollar through hedging crypto positions.
The move comes as Ethena mulls flipping a so-called "fee switch" for its governance token, ENA, that would share protocol revenues with holders. Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes said the Binance integration could accelerate this fee switch, which could "unlock $500m of buybacks."
ENA is up nearly 2% at press time to trade at $0.79. This is up from a recent low in June of around $0.23, according to The Block’s price page. The token has an all-time high of $1.52.
Trading on Binance, which has an estimated 280 million users, has historically been dominated by Tether's USDT. The Ethena team argues this status quo could be upended by offering USDe as collateral for futures and perpetual contracts, which theoretically boosts capital efficiency by earning on margin balances. Users can trade any asset "with USDe collateralising their entire portfolio," Ethena noted.
The team pointed to an earlier integration on rival exchange Bybit in 2024 that saw USDe overtake USDC among users due to built-in rewards. USDe now reportedly accounts for 12% of total USD balances on Bybit, Ethena said.
According to the announcement, additional spot trading pairs using USDe on Binance are underway.
Last week, TLGY Acquisition Corp. and StablecoinX Assets Inc., which are looking to merge and list on Nasdaq as StablecoinX (ticker USDE), announced they are raising $530 million through a private placement to build out an ENA treasury.
