Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of crypto exchange Coinbase, has invested in Ethena, the crypto protocol behind the synthetic dollar token USDe, by buying ENA tokens on the open market.

The deal comes as the companies prepare to launch next week an on-chain savings product for Coinbase’s more than 100 million users.

Ethena’s USDe yield token will be distributed on Base and across the wider Coinbase ecosystem.

USDe is a synthetic dollar that aims to track $1 without cash or Treasury reserves, using spot crypto collateral hedged with short perpetual futures.

Coinbase said it already serves as Ethena’s primary custodian, wallet provider, and perpetuals venue.

The planned savings product appears to center on Ethena’s yield-bearing USDe token, known as sUSDe.

The token generates returns from ether staking rewards, perpetual funding, and futures basis, but it also carries funding-rate, exchange-counterparty, custody, and unwind risks.

In the US, yield-bearing stablecoins sit outside the Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2025 guidance on certain non-yield-bearing stablecoins and the GENIUS Act’s payment-stablecoin category.

That leaves regulatory uncertainty as Coinbase expands beyond fiat-backed USDC.

Ethena’s assets reached about US$15 billion at an October peak before falling to about US$5.3 billion as demand and yields waned.

🔗 Source: Coinbase

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