Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN), said it had backed Ethena (ENA), purchasing the protocol’s token on the open market as the two companies prepare to launch a new on-chain savings product for the exchange’s more than 100 million users.
Ethena announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with Coinbase to expand on-chain finance and savings offerings, with the first initiative set to launch next week.
“I’m excited to partner with Coinbase for the first time to support their dollar savings products,” Ethena founder Guy Young said in a post on
As part of the deal, Coinbase said it is already Ethena’s primary custodian, wallet provider, and perpetual securities venue, while the protocol’s USDe yield token will be distributed on the Base network and the “broader.” [Coinbase] ecosystem.”
ENA, Ethena’s governance token, rose 20% on the news before paring gains. The token is up 3% in the last 24 hours despite the broader crypto market pullback.
The investment marks a notable endorsement from Coinbase as Ethena seeks to expand beyond crypto-native users. Ethena emerged as one of the fastest growing crypto protocols, combining demand for stablecoins with derivatives-based financing strategies to provide returns to investors in token form. The protocol’s assets rose to $15 billion at the October market peak, but have since declined to $5.3 billion as demand and returns declined amid the cryptocurrency slowdown.
The announcement comes as lawmakers continue to debate the CLARITY Act, a market structure bill that could provide a clearer regulatory framework for crypto products in the US. Young said the legislation could create additional tailwinds for native on-chain assets like USDe, Ethena’s synthetic dollar token.
Leveraging Coinbase’s user base
While neither company revealed details of the upcoming product, investors speculated that the partnership could significantly expand Ethena’s distribution.
Access to Coinbase’s user base could provide a new source of capital as the protocol seeks to expand beyond decentralized finance into major cryptocurrency brokerage platforms.
Yan Liberman, managing partner at Delphi Ventures, an investor in Ethena, said the deal could potentially connect Coinbase’s roughly $19 billion USDC stablecoin ecosystem with Ethena’s yield-generating infrastructure.
“If sUSDe produces clear USDC benchmark rates, Coinbase can offer better USDC lending yields,” Liberman wrote on X. “Ethena gets deeper and cheaper funding than native DeFi alone.”
Expansion into the institutional credit market with Anchorage
Ethena is also delving into institutional markets.
On Tuesday, crypto bank and protocol Anchorage Digital said it had expanded its partnership with Ethena to support institutional lending.
Under the agreement, Anchorage will manage collateral for Ethena’s credit investments through its Atlas platform, allowing borrowers to keep assets in custody rather than moving them on-chain.
The setup aims to make crypto-native lending more accessible to institutions that require regulated compliance and custody controls.
“Institutions want access to crypto-native capital, but not at the cost of custody, controls or operational rigor,” Anchorage CEO Nathan McCauley said in a statement.
The announcement is based on an existing relationship between the companies. Anchorage Digital Bank already acts as the US issuer of Ethena’s USDtb stablecoin.
