Ethena expands basis trading to stock perpetual contracts, expecting that RWA perpetuals will surpass crypto derivatives within 12-24 months

The cryptocurrency protocol Ethena, which issued $4 billion in synthetic US dollars (USDe), announced plans to expand its basis trading strategy to stock perpetual contracts. According to Ethena's data, the open interest in stock perpetual contracts has grown tenfold to $6.2 billion since March. Over the past few months, the funding rates on Hyperliquid and Binance averaged approximately 14% and 17.5%, respectively, while the Bitcoin funding rate during the same period was only in the low single digits.

Ethena pointed out that the average Bitcoin funding rate was 11% in 2024, 4.9% in 2025, and has dropped to 2.2% as of August 11 this year. In contrast, stock perpetual contracts had positive funding rates on 94% of trading days on Hyperliquid and 97% on Binance, with a median funding rate of 13.9%, while Bitcoin's was 3.9%. Co-founder Guy Young stated that stocks tend to rise in the long term, creating a continuous demand for leveraged longs to pay fees, and that the funding rate for stocks has almost no correlation with Bitcoin, providing USDe with a revenue source that relies less on the crypto market.

The global stock market had a market capitalization of approximately $166.5 trillion in July, far exceeding the crypto market's approximately $2.2 trillion. This expansion is one of Ethena's initiatives to seek new revenue sources after the supply of USDe fell from a peak of about $15 billion to below $5 billion. Last week, it also announced a $1 billion financing arrangement with FalconX.