ENA 매입 의혹: StablecoinX 포지션 증가 배후의 진실

Foresight News

特邀专栏作者

2026-04-29 07:00

이 기사는 약 6177자로, 전체를 읽는 데 약 9분이 소요됩니다

PIPE 거래와 온체인 발자취: Ethena ENA 매입 계획의 실제 실행 경로 추론.

AI 요약

펼치기

핵심 의견: StablecoinX는 1년 동안 두 차례의 PIPE 자금 조달과 현물 출자를 통해 ENA 총 공급량의 20.3%를 보유하고 있습니다. 온체인 데이터에 따르면, 약 5억 3800만 달러 규모의 공개 시장 ENA 매입은 시장의 순수 흡수가 아닌, Ethena 관련 지갑이 거래소에 사전에 배치한 재고에 의해 이루어졌을 가능성이 있습니다.
핵심 요소:
1. StablecoinX는 두 차례의 PIPE 자금 조달(각각 7월과 9월)과 세 번째 현물 출자를 통해 총 약 30.4억 개의 ENA(총 공급량의 20.3%)를 축적했으며, 자금 흐름은 제출 서류와 매우 일치합니다.
2. 두 차례의 PIPE는 공개 시장에서 ENA를 매입하는 데 사용된 약 5억 2500만 달러(순액)의 현금을 창출했습니다. 온체인에서는 총 규모 약 14.4억 개의 ENA(약 5억 3800만 달러)에 달하는 실행 클러스터가 관찰되었으며, 규모는 공식 발표와 일치합니다.
3. 첫 번째 PIPE(8~9월) 실행 과정에서 Coinbase Prime에서 인출된 약 1억 8000만 달러 상당의 ENA 중 89%가 Ethena 재무부 지갑에서 유입되었습니다. 이는 공급이 시장 매입이 아닌 사전에 배치되었을 가능성을 시사합니다.
4. 두 번째 PIPE(11월~2월) 실행 과정에서 Coinbase에서 인출된 8300만 달러 상당의 ENA 재고 역시 Ethena 재무부가 Coinbase Prime에 공급했으며, 거래 완료 후 Coinbase 잔고는 거의 원래 상태로 복구되었습니다.
5. Bybit 실행 단계(11월~2월) 전에 해당 플랫폼의 ENA 잔고가 급증하여 Binance와의 비율이 1:3에서 1.1:1로 상승했습니다. 이는 실행 과정에서 자연스럽게 축적된 것이 아니라 재고가 사전에 집중되었을 가능성을 시사합니다.

Original Author: @gmnay_

Original Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

StablecoinX, as Ethena's treasury tool, has grown from holding 0% of the ENA supply to 20.3% in less than a year. According to the filing documents for two PIPE rounds, the structure can be summarized as:

Investors provide cash and physical ENA
Cash is used to purchase locked ENA from Ethena at a discount

Ethena uses this cash proceeds to buy ENA on the open market (approximately $570 million, net of fees around $525 million).

The core issue isn't whether ENA was purchased through trading venues, but rather whether these purchases represent net absorption from the open market, or if a significant portion of what appears to be open market execution was actually facilitated by ENA inventory previously supplied to these venues by Ethena-associated wallets.

On-chain, I have identified clusters that align highly with the announced scale and timing. The execution footprint suggests that supply may have been staged across various trading venues before execution, rather than being sourced directly from the open market.

This analysis relies on entity-level attribution (via @inflecta_io). To ensure full verifiability, the referenced fund flows include underlying wallet addresses and transaction records (see footnotes).

This is a best-effort reconstruction based on public data. Attribution is probabilistic, and some interpretations may be incomplete.

Background

PIPE 1

On July 21, 2025, TLGY announced the StablecoinX transaction and an initial PIPE of approximately $360 million. This PIPE was split into roughly $260 million (net) in cash and approximately $101 million in-kind contributions, including a $60 million contribution from the Ethena Foundation.

Simply put, Ethena sold locked ENA at a disclosed price of $0.21056 per token (a 30% discount at the time), funded by the cash portion of the PIPE.

A subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation, through an intermediate market maker, plans to use the proceeds from the token sale... to purchase ENA on public trading venues starting today, further aligning the Foundation's incentives with StablecoinX shareholders.

(Source: sec.gov)

PIPE 2

On September 5, 2025, the parties announced an additional $530 million PIPE, split into approximately $265 million (net) in cash and approximately $248 million in physical ENA, with the locked ENA priced at $0.29.

Similar to the initial PIPE, a subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation intends to use all cash proceeds... to purchase ENA on the open market starting today through an intermediate market maker...

(Source: sec.gov)

The company later stated that, including the additional PIPE, StablecoinX was expected to hold over 3 billion ENA at settlement.

StablecoinX Holdings

According to Inflecta data, StablecoinX currently holds 20.3% of the ENA supply (approximately 3.04 billion ENA). Each large accumulation event corresponds to a corresponding decrease in treasury/insider balances, consistent with the structure described in the filing documents.

The three steps include:

Approximately 1.23 billion ENA (Batch 1) on July 23rd – consistent with the initial discounted ENA sale disclosed in PIPE 1
Approximately 914.3 million ENA (Batch 2) on September 19th – consistent with the additional discounted ENA sale in PIPE 2
Approximately 885 million ENA in-kind batch (Batch 3) from March 14-18 – from Ethena and investors, consistent with the in-kind portion of the PIPE structure, including Ethena treasury's contribution of 284.95 million ENA / approximately $60 million

StablecoinX In-Kind Contributions (Source: inflecta.io)

Overall, StablecoinX's fund flows align highly with the structure described in the filing documents.

ENA Buyback

Now, the most interesting part: open market execution.

Across the two PIPE rounds, approximately $525 million (net) in cash was allocated to purchase ENA. The filings state that a subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation would use these proceeds to acquire ENA on the open market through market makers.

I have identified two clusters that match the announced plan in both scale and timing. Before diving into these fund flows, it's worth looking at the supply dynamics at the trading venue level:

ENA balance on Coinbase Prime appeared on July 16th – five days before the PIPE 1 announcement – and moved in large, fragmented amounts
During November-December, approximately 2% of the total supply was rebalanced between Coinbase and Coinbase Prime
Bybit balance expanded aggressively, briefly surpassing Binance, then collapsed

Observed Execution for PIPE 1

Duration: August 20th - September 26th
Total Observed Size: 370 million ENA / approximately $266 million (at withdrawal time) (vs. filing net of ~$260 million)
Venues: Coinbase Prime, Binance

Coinbase Prime Component

Composed of three Coinbase Prime Custody wallets, which withdrew:

August 20th: 21.8 million ENA (4) – subsequently sent to PIPE 2 wallet (12), linking the two clusters
September 10th: 187.5 million ENA (5)
September 11th: 26.5 million ENA (6)

Total approximately $180 million.

Key observation: Coinbase Prime had no substantial ENA balance before mid-July.

So the question arises: where did this supply come from?

Between July 16th and September 11th, wallets strongly associated with Ethena accounted for approximately 89.3% of all external Coinbase Prime inflows, depositing approximately 383.9 million ENA (approximately $278 million) through a single deposit wallet (7).

The majority of this – approximately 316.7 million ENA – came from one of Ethena's main treasury wallets (8).

September 5th: 70 million ENA (approximately $46.4 million) – exactly on the day PIPE #2 was announced

September 10th: 246.7 million ENA (approximately $194.5 million, split over 5 transactions) – exactly on the day the largest withdrawal occurred

In other words, a significant portion of the ENA subsequently withdrawn from Coinbase Prime appears to have originated from wallets controlled by Ethena.

Binance Component

Consisting of a single wallet (9) that withdrew 133.3 million ENA (approximately $86 million) from Binance between September 15th and 26th, and approximately $500,000 from Coinbase, almost all sent to wallets associated with Ethena and the StablecoinX fundraising (10).

The chart below shows a wallet (11) that received approximately 8.4% of the total supply from the main treasury wallet in 2024 – indicating control by the Ethena treasury – and distributed 150 million ENA to Binance and Bybit between July 21st (the day PIPE 1 was announced) and July 26th through nine intermediary wallets.

Between July 21-26, a wallet strongly associated with Ethena distributed 150 million ENA to exchanges through nine intermediary wallets. Approximately 1.5 months later, another Ethena-associated cluster withdrew approximately 134 million ENA from Binance.

Observed Execution for PIPE 2

Duration: November 7th - February 12th
Total Size: 1.068 billion ENA / approximately $272 million (at withdrawal time) (vs. filing net of $265 million)
Venues: Coinbase, Bybit

Execution ultimately converged into a single wallet (12).

Coinbase Component

Contains only one transaction (13):

December 3rd: 302.94 million ENA / $83 million.

Let's look at the fund flows leading to this transaction:

Sequence of events:

October 14th: Ethena treasury injects approximately 363 million ENA into Coinbase Prime (14)
November 1st: 63.6 million ENA returned to the same treasury wallet (15)
November 14th: Coinbase Prime transfers approximately 281 million ENA to Coinbase (16)
November 17-20th: CB Prime and Coinbase rebalance inventory through intermediary wallets (17)
December 3rd: Approximately 227 million ENA transferred from CB Prime to Coinbase (18) – less than a minute before Coinbase sent 303 million ENA to the execution wallet (12)

Summary: The transfer on December 3rd appears to be the result of a CB Prime → Coinbase injection, rather than a gradual accumulation of Coinbase-held supply – and that Prime inventory was itself supplied by the Ethena treasury. After the transaction, Coinbase's balance returned roughly to its starting point (approximately 140 million ENA).

Bybit Component

The same execution wallet shows two distinct accumulation phases:

November 7th - December 7th: 440 million ENA (approximately $126.8 million), primarily in units of 25 million ENA
January 7th - February 12th: 325 million ENA (approximately $62.2 million), also in units of 25 million ENA

CEX balances provide additional context.

Bybit's balance grew from approximately 240 million ENA at the end of April to approximately 1.05 billion ENA on November 6th – the day before execution began.

While this period overlaps with investor distributions, the relative changes between venues are notable:

Bybit:Binance supply ratio went from approximately 1:3 at end of April
Peaked at approximately 1.1:1 on November 6th
Then returned to approximately 1:3 after the program ended

Arkham's 'Token Balance History' can be used to cross-verify data.

What stands out here is the timing: inventory appears to have been concentrated on Bybit *before* the execution, rather than being accumulated gradually *during* the execution.

What could cause this shift? The data shows cross-venue market maker routing (heavily skewed towards Bybit), concurrent with ongoing investor distributions (primarily to Binance), and some fund flows from Coinbase Prime.

Several possible explanations exist:

Execution occurred earlier on another venue (e.g., Binance), and the supply was subsequently repositioned to Bybit for withdrawal
Demand for ENA on Bybit spiked just before execution, peaked before withdrawals began, and then normalized
The execution counterparty routed existing inventory to Bybit before the plan commenced

The question is whether this fits a simple narrative of 'accumulation on the open market during the execution period.' I welcome alternative interpretations and am happy to share the underlying data.

Final Thoughts

I have reconstructed the on-chain activity within the execution windows. The final chart summarizes the fund flows discussed in the article:

Total Observed Size: 1.44 billion ENA (approximately $538 million at withdrawal time)

This represents:

Approximately 9.6% of the total supply
Approximately 25% of the free float (calculated as total supply minus treasury, StablecoinX, and locked insiders)

Some of the execution wallets shown above are commonly associated with Ethena's buyback activities. More importantly, they are the only substantial, observable clusters I have found that simultaneously match the scale, timing, and footprint described in the filings as 'on the open market.'

This does not mean these trades did not occur on public venues, but rather that the interpretation of a 'buyback' depends on whether they represent net market absorption or the withdrawal of supply that was previously positioned in these venues.

This is not a perfect attribution statement. On-chain attribution is inherently probabilistic. If there is additional context or a different interpretation supported by on-chain data, I am happy to incorporate it.

At this scale, execution cannot be invisible.

Notes

(1) StablecoinX Batch #1 Transaction 0x3339455dd775da5e18778577bdbb9dd20f96858295cb05c9d3ed0f630f6fb868

(2) StablecoinX Batch #2 Transaction ID 0xb22d5e79122aa6a3c6ed1bb4dbe0057a4802c0dc37eaf6dab38736cddca31b44

(3) StablecoinX Batch 3 Wallet 0x7462f0D93260909870487f17A27c336349579557

(4) PIPE #1 CB Prime Cluster Wallet #1 0xd54ce6a55312cbd708166d225bbdba95458177ab

(5) PIPE #1 CB Prime Cluster Wallet #2 0xa55457e0d0652ba47fe1f97873a62b4f9dcae4d1

(6) PIPE #1 CB Prime Cluster Wallet #3 0x72b272ccca76e0394352ff7819fb846855a164ad

(7) Ethena's CB Prime Deposit Wallet Address: 0xF2e2f6827AB893d636eb98F3Aac81E850880DA83

(8) Ethena Treasury Wallet 0xcfc40d4ECa21F60D329F1E6b9B3D6069EaA20BBC

(9) PIPE #1 Binance Execution Wallet: 0x9c7B3C57632aB8BED71a4dDbC950d8C009DFe7aA

(10) Ethena Controlled Wallet 0x8e771f7bAb34a3b4491e03F22f005483E5c375f5