Standard Chartered Initiates Ethena (ENA) Coverage With $2 End-2028 Target

A Staged Path to $2

Standard Chartered initiated research coverage of Ethena (ENA) on Sept. 30, setting a year-end 2028 price target of $2 — roughly eight times the token's market price at publication. The bank's Digital Assets report, authored by Geoff Kendrick, its global head of digital assets research, lays out a staged valuation path: $0.42 by the close of 2026, $1.10 by the close of 2027 and $2.00 by the close of 2028. ENA traded near $0.25 on Sept. 30, leaving the token roughly 87% below the target, so the terminal level implies upside of approximately 700%. Kendrick framed the Ethena protocol as a “scalable yield-bearing stablecoin” and anchored the valuation on three markets the bank expects to compound: stablecoins, perpetual futures and the tokenization of real-world assets. At the center sits USDe, the protocol's synthetic dollar — a hedged-collateral design rather than a purely algorithmic stablecoin. Launched in late 2023, USDe reached a $10 billion market capitalization faster than any stablecoin before it, and the report estimates yield-bearing stablecoins now account for roughly 5% of the overall stablecoin market, a share Standard Chartered expects to climb as users pursue yield alongside dollar-linked payment functions. The call also leans on a sector-wide projection: the bank forecasts real-world assets deployed on blockchains to grow from about $40 billion today to $2 trillion by the end of 2028, the same horizon as the $2 ENA target. The initiation lands alongside fast-building institutional plumbing: CME Group introduced ENA reference rates in August, covering London, New York and Asia-Pacific closes, with CF Benchmarks calculating the daily benchmarks from eligible spot exchanges for portfolio valuation and ENA-linked products. For anyone tracking the broader altcoin market, a globally systemically important bank publishing an ENA valuation is a notable first.

Buybacks and a $40 Billion USDe Bet

Token economics form the second pillar of the $2 case. In August, Ethena proposed directing 95% of net revenue generated by its branded businesses toward recurring ENA buybacks once USDe supply crosses a series of thresholds, with the first set at $7.5 billion. Unlike the earlier $260 million program that relied on a fixed pool of capital, the proposed structure ties purchases to recurring revenue, steadily removing supply through a proof-of-burn-style mechanism. Standard Chartered estimates USDe supply could exceed $40 billion by the end of 2028, at which point the revenue-linked buybacks would reach meaningful scale. The proposal was announced while USDe stood below $5 billion, after previously peaking near $15 billion. Supply mechanics are shifting in parallel: the Ethena Foundation purchased locked tokens from some large seed investors that had been selling, and plans to accelerate the remaining unlocks for original investors, ending their monthly releases, while tokens allocated to the team stay on existing vesting schedules. The revenue side of the equation rests on USDe's backing diversifying beyond the crypto basis trade — the delta-neutral engine that historically held spot assets against short perpetual futures, at times producing yields above 20% without directional leverage. A $1 billion lending facility launched with FalconX in August routes reserves into secured, overcollateralized institutional loans; institutional lending represented about $310 million, or 6.9%, of USDe backing in early July. Ethena has also extended the trade into tokenized U.S. equities and equity perpetual futures after its Risk Committee approved the framework, as covered in our earlier report — Binance carried more than $2.9 billion in equity perpetual open interest at the announcement, and the equity basis averaged 3.56% annualized over the prior six months. Founder Guy Young called the move the most significant expansion of USDe's funding mechanism since launch. A planned $250 million allocation to Securitize's tokenized AAA-rated CLO fund, with BNY as custodian and sub adviser, adds traditional credit exposure to the mix.

The $7.5 Billion Trigger to Watch

Further details from the research note fill in the buyback math. A fee switch approved by Ethena governance in early September directs 95% of net revenue to ENA purchases once USDe hits supply milestones, and the protocol estimates that at $25 billion in USDe supply the mechanism could generate $375 million in annual buybacks, assuming a 6% gross yield and a 25% net revenue take rate. Standard Chartered calculates that at its $40 billion supply forecast, buybacks would equal roughly 23% of ENA's circulating market cap, a pace it calls unsustainable, and expects the token price to rise until purchases settle near the 3% to 4% rate Uniswap's UNI buybacks have stabilized at. The bank also sees tokenized assets growing from about $350 billion to $4 trillion by 2028, while forecasting BTC at $300,000 and ETH at $18,000 over the same period. ENA traded near $0.27 on Wednesday, up 77% on the month, per CoinGecko data, with a market cap near $2.65 billion.

The research note's yield math leans on a blended return that Standard Chartered puts at 5.2% across USDe's expanded sources, a pool that now includes DeFi, institutional lending and commodity-linked basis trades alongside the original crypto carry. Ethena began allocating to stock perpetuals on Binance on Sept. 25, a step that lets USDe earn from tokenized equities rather than crypto funding alone, and the report uses a $0.28 reference price, making its $2 call a roughly sevenfold re-rating rather than the eightfold implied at spot. The bank also projects USDe growth to slightly outpace the broader stablecoin market through 2028, with ENA outperforming both Bitcoin and Ether over that horizon. Those projections assume Ethena can secure enough of the expanding tokenized-asset pool to keep net revenue flowing toward the buyback switch, since weaker basis returns or slower adoption would shrink the income base behind the $375 million annual purchase estimate.

(as of 21:23 UTC) The two threads of the coverage note describe a bank valuing ENA less as a speculative trading token and more as a claim on the Ethena ecosystem's expanding revenue base. Our reading is that the $2 target is a conditional projection rather than an unconditional re-rating: it requires yield-bearing stablecoins and tokenized assets to grow in line with the bank's own sector forecasts while the revenue-linked buyback executes on schedule. Market data shows the token has already repriced on the expansion narrative — ENA gained 54.1% over the seven days through Sept. 26, trading around $0.2756 after touching $0.2807, a run that has drawn attention from traders tracking notable ENA positions. The first hard checkpoint is USDe supply crossing $7.5 billion.