Ethena announces new stablecoin backed by BlackRock’s BUIDL fund

Ethena (ENA) has announced a new stablecoin dubbed UStb, which is to be launched in collaboration with Securitize.

Securitize is the real-world asset tokenization platform for the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, BUIDL.

Ethena Labs partners with Securitize for UStb

According to an announcement from Ethena Labs, UStb is a new stablecoin that will function similarly to traditional stablecoins. UStb’s launch is a result of the collaboration with Securitize, with the stablecoin fully backed by BUIDL.

Launched earlier this year, BUIDL is BlackRock’s tokenized US Treasuries fund on Ethereum. rwa.xyz data shows its market cap stands at over $513 million, making it the largest asset in the $2.2 billion tokenized securities market.

Other assets in the market include Franklin Templeton’s US Government Onchain Money Fund (FOBXX) and Ondo Finance’s Ondo US Dollar Yield (USDY). The two account for $435 million and $400 million respectively at the time of writing.

BlackRock’s BUIDL is tokenized on Ethereum, while FOBXX and USDY are multi-chain.

UStb and USDe

Per Ethena Labs, the launch of the UStb stablecoin with BUIDL reserves will see the new token operate separately and alongside USDe – a synthetic dollar that looks to retain its 1:1 peg with “delta-neutral” position as reserve backing.

In this case, UStb will offer users a new product featuring a separate risk profile from that of USDe. This includes the community concern round negative funding rate for USDe. Such concerns saw the stablecoin face close to $100 million in redemptions during a recent downturn stress test. That caused USDe to briefly slip to $0.997 before re-establishing the $1 peg.

However, Ethena USDe has not hit any week of negative funding and integration with UStb will provide a buffer should weak funding conditions.

“If governance deems it necessary and appropriate in negative funding conditions Ethena can close hedging positions and re-allocate those backing assets to UStb to further ameliorate risk associated with negative funding rate environments,” Ethena Labs wrote.

ENA price

Ethena (ENA) price shot up double digits as the platform announced the new stablecoin.

After trading near $0.30 in early Asian hours, the altcoin spiked to hit highs of $0.37.

With over 14% upside in the past 24 hours and nearly 45% rally in the past week, ENA has emerged as one of the biggest daily gainers. Sentiment contrasts sharply with how it was after a recent compromise to Ethena Labs’ website.

Ethena is trending alongside Worldcoin (WLD), which rose 17% in the past 24 hours despite negative news from South Korea.

The ENA gains also put it ahead of Starknet (STRK), which is up 12% in 24 hours to rank among largest gainers in top 100 coins by market cap.

The ENA price is retesting levels last seen in the last week of August, when it hovered near $0.4.

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