Ethena Mechanics: The Basis Trade became a Lending Book

@ethena_labs built USDe on one trade: hold spot crypto, short the perp, collect funding. On 12 October that trade backed 17.6% of USDe. Just over half of the $4.76B backing was lent out, 36.9% into

@ethena_labs built USDe on one trade: hold spot crypto, short the perp, collect funding. On 12 October that trade backed 17.6% of USDe. Just over half of the $4.76B backing was lent out, 36.9% into DeFi lending markets and 14.3% to institutions, and another quarter sat in plain stablecoins. Over the past week BTC funding on OKX annualised to about 2% and ETH funding to roughly zero, while sUSDe paid 4.87%. So the synthetic dollar most curators still underwrite as a funding-rate product now earns