Is It Too Late to Buy Ethena? ENA Price Soars After Binance Listing and This Other Coin is About to List on Exchanges
The newly-listed Ethena token (ENA) has surged 13% in 24 hours and 53% overall since listing on Binance on Tuesday.
ENA is a governance token for Ethena’s decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol. The protocol’s yield-earning dollar-pegged stablecoin USDe offers a staggering 35% APY.
Unlike its traditional rivals Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), USDe token is a s0-called “synthetic dollar,” able to generate yields by pairing ether liquid staking tokens with short ether (ETH) perpetual futures positions for collateral, in order to maintain its $1 price peg.
A mechanism called “delta hedging” ensures the stability of the coin. The technique involves offsetting the price change risk of the collateral assets with corresponding short futures positions.
USDe’s market cap has also exploded recently, and currently sits at a fraction short of $2 billion, making it the number two trending cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap today with a $2.5 billion 24-hour trading volume.
According to valuation tracker Tracxn, Ethena Labs has raised over $20 million over two rounds of funding participated by Franklin Templeton, DragonFly, Kraken, Maelstrom, and others. BitMex co-founder Arthur Hayes was an angel investor in Ethena.
USDe supply $1,500,000,000@ethena_labs now 15% of global ETH open interest
Would be a shame if we launched BTC next week, don't you think? pic.twitter.com/Kw8qZRSids
— Ethena Labs (@ethena_labs) March 29, 2024
Over on ENA’s trading chart we can see a nearly 20% pullback from a post-launch high of about $1.25 on Tuesday. All told the coin’s value has doubled since it began its listing at roughly $0.64.
This morning, a short sharp buying spree drove ENA’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) to over 70, indicating overbought conditions, but it appears to have cooled off within the last hour.
Ethena’s ENA Is A Workhorse, Slothana Is A Sloth
For many investors, ENA’s pegging mechanism evokes nightmares of Terraform Labs’ UST, the dollar-pegged stablecoin that crashed the entire market back in 2022.
UST also offered attractive yields for staking it in the Anchor lending protocol. Like ENA, cash and cash reserves didn’t peg UST to the greenback. Instead, a mint/burn mechanism enabled users to mint one UST by burning $1 worth of a related cryptocurrency called LUNA and vice versa.
The mechanism failed when falling interest rates on Anchor led to a bank run on UST in May 2022. Too many people tried to exit the stablecoin at once, pushing LUNA into a hyper-inflationary spiral as panicking UST exiters minted 7 trillion LUNA tokens.
The industry has learned a lot since 2022 and there is now increased scrutiny around stablecoins and their reserves.
Time will tell if ENA is a safe bet, but ENA holders can diversify their portfolios to capitalize on Bitcoin’s bullish halving narrative by investing in hot new meme coins.
How about a 420-friendly sloth with big dreams?
🌿🦥 As the sun sets on Easter Monday, I can't help but feel blessed by the loyal supporters of Slothana! 🌅🚀 Just like the disciples followed their messiah, you, my fellow sloths, continue to spread the gospel of lazy trading and meme craft #slothana #memecoin
— Slothana (@SlothanaCoin) April 1, 2024
In a few days, traders have poured $7.6 million into an ICO for new Solana meme coin Slothana ($SLOTH) to try and recapture some of the early upside potential of established Solana funny tokens like Slerfs, DogWifHat and Bonk.
Solana’s latest meme sensation is a lazy critter who lives and works on the blockchain. But with his permanently red eyes, he can’t hide the fact that he really doesn’t want to work; he wants to go from 420 to $420 million.
Word on the grapevine says Slothana is by the same team that launched Smog (SMOG), which rallied strongly after ending its presale and listing.
Details are scarce at present, but interested investors can join the presale by sending SOL to this address: EnSawje2vQSQKtGbPYdXEuYKm2sHgeLKJTqCmrDErKEA
Disclaimer: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.
