On Wednesday, Standard Chartered launched its coverage of Ethena, predicting that its ENA token will climb to $2 by closing out 2028 as the stablecoin project scales its income-producing collateral pool and repurchase initiative.
Based on data from The Block’s ENA price tracker, ENA traded at $0.26 on Wednesday. The projection from Standard Chartered points to a potential surge of roughly 669% from that price point. Additionally, the financial institution anticipates the total circulating supply of Ethena’s USDe to expand past an eightfold increase, moving from its current $4.9 billion to approximately $40 billion by the conclusion of 2028.
Ethena holds the position of the fourth-biggest stablecoin provider trailing Tether, Circle, and Sky, and comes in second among providers of interest-bearing stablecoins behind Sky. Standard Chartered notes that interest-generating stablecoins currently make up around 5% of the wider stablecoin marketplace.
Scaling yield buybacks
In a communication directed to clients, Standard Chartered explained that Ethena is diversifying the return mechanisms supporting USDe as profits originating from crypto basis trades have diminished. The institution drew attention to real-world assets, decentralized finance alongside institutional lending, liquid stablecoins, as well as equity and commodity-linked basis trades as emerging yield generators.
In a related development, Ethena has broadened this approach into tokenized stocks utilizing Binance’s bStocks, employing these instruments as spot collateral for USDe alongside Binance equity perpetual contracts to mitigate risk exposure, as documented by The Block.
“The expanded collateral base dedicated to yield generation supports scalability,” the firm noted, estimating that tokenized assets, which encompass stablecoins and other RWAs, will grow to $4 trillion by the end of 2028 compared to roughly $350 billion today.
The remaining pillar of Standard Chartered’s ENA investment thesis centers on the behavior of the token as USDe scales. Ethena’s fee activation mechanism, which secured unanimous approval through a 100% vote, mandates that 95% of net profits produced across all verticals under the Ethena brand must be allocated toward algorithmic ENA buybacks.
Should circulating USDe achieve the $40 billion mark by the end of 2028 while ENA maintains its present valuation, Standard Chartered computes that annualized repurchase allocations would represent about 23% of the token’s market capitalization. The firm deems that proportion excessively high for long-term viability, suggesting that ENA must appreciate in value until the buyback percentage normalizes at a reduced level.
“For these buybacks to remain sustainable, the ENA token price will rise,” the bank stated.
As a point of comparison, Standard Chartered references Uniswap, where the annualized repurchase percentage has stabilized between approximately 3% and 4% following the activation of its fee switch in December 2025. The institution observed that UNI has nearly tripled since initiating coverage on the asset in June, with the price appreciation helping to balance what otherwise would have constituted an unsustainably large proportion of repurchased tokens.
Meanwhile, the lender highlights a slower-than-anticipated expansion in interest-bearing stablecoins as the primary threat to the projection. A sluggish expansion of real-world assets integrated onto blockchain networks would present a supplementary hazard given that Ethena relies progressively on those instruments to produce returns.
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/markets/2026-09-30-standard-chartered-sees-over-600-upside-for-ena-expects-usde-to-hit-40-billion-by-2028-417274.
