StablecoinX, a stablecoin infrastructure company, closed its merger with TLGY Acquisition Corp and started trading on Nasdaq on Friday. It’s the first public company focused on the Ethena ecosystem, trading under the ticker “USDE.”
The company runs decentralized verifier nodes and builds middleware software for Ethena, which issues USDe — a yield-bearing synthetic dollar-pegged stablecoin. Unlike USDT or USDC, USDe isn’t backed by actual dollars. Instead, it uses crypto collateral (Bitcoin and Ether) paired with short futures positions to maintain its peg.
That delta-neutral strategy works fine in normal markets, but it gets shaky when futures funding rates go negative. And lately, things haven’t been normal. USDe’s circulating supply has dropped 70% since its October peak, now sitting around $4.5 billion — good for sixth place among stablecoins.
StablecoinX also holds about 3 billion Ethena governance tokens (ENA), roughly 20% of the total supply, valued at around $275 million. ENA itself is trading at $0.08, down 94% from its April 2024 all-time high.
CEO Edward Chen called Ethena “one of the most important platforms powering the next generation of digital dollars.” Maybe so, but the timing is rough — the broader crypto market is down 52% since October, with $2.3 trillion in value gone.
Still, getting listed on Nasdaq as a crypto-stablecoin play in this market? That takes some conviction.
