ENA回购疑云：StablecoinX持仓增长背后的真相

Original Author: @gmnay_

Original Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

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

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

Ethena uses these cash proceeds to purchase ENA on the open market (approximately $570 million, netting approximately $525 million after fees)

The core issue isn't whether ENA was bought 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-linked wallets.

On-chain, I identified clusters highly consistent with the announced scale and timing. The execution footprint suggests 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, all referenced fund flows include underlying wallets 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 consisted of approximately $260 million (net) in cash and approximately $101 million in-kind payments, 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 intermediary 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, consisting of approximately $265 million (net) in cash and approximately $248 million in-kind ENA, with locked ENA priced at $0.29.

As with the initial PIPE, a subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation intends to use all cash proceeds… to purchase ENA on the open market through an intermediary market maker starting today…

(Source: sec.gov)

The company later stated that with 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 filings.

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 284.95 million ENA / approximately $60 million contribution from the Ethena treasury

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

Overall, the fund flows for StablecoinX are highly consistent with the structure described in the filings.

ENA Buybacks

Now, the most interesting part: open market execution.

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

I identified two clusters consistent in size and timing with the announced plans. Before diving into these fund flows, it's worth looking at the supply dynamics at the venue level:

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

Observed Execution for PIPE 1

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

Coinbase Prime Component

Consists of three Coinbase Prime Custody wallets that withdrew:

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

Total approximately $180 million.

Key Observation: Coinbase Prime had no material ENA balance before mid-July.

So 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 (~$278 million) through a single deposit wallet (7).

The majority of this – approximately 316.7 million ENA – came from a major Ethena treasury wallet (8).

70 million ENA (~$46.4 million) on September 5th – precisely the day of the PIPE #2 announcement

246.7 million ENA (~$194.5 million, across 5 transactions) on September 10th – precisely 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

Consists solely of one wallet (9) that withdrew 133.3 million ENA (~$86 million) from Binance between September 15th and 26th, and approximately $500k from Coinbase, nearly 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 of the PIPE 1 announcement) and July 26th through nine intermediary wallets.

Between July 21-26, a wallet strongly associated with Ethena distributed 150 million ENA to exchanges via 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) (vs. ~$265 million net per filings)
• Venues: Coinbase, Bybit

The execution eventually converged into a single wallet (12).

Coinbase Component

Consists of a single transaction (13):

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

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 returns 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 sends 303 million ENA to the execution wallet (12)

Summary: The December 3rd transfer seems to result from 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 largely returned 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 (~$126.8 million), primarily in units of 25 million ENA
• January 7th - February 12th: 325 million ENA (~$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 started.

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

• Bybit:Binance supply ratio went from roughly 1:3 at the end of April
• Peaked at approximately 1.1:1 on November 6th
• Then reverted to approximately 1:3 after the plan concluded

Arkham's "Token Balance History" can be used for cross-verification.

What stands out here is the timing: inventory appeared concentrated on Bybit before the execution, rather than being accumulated gradually during the process.

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

There are several possible explanations:

• Execution occurred earlier on another venue (e.g., Binance), with supply subsequently repositioned to Bybit for withdrawal
• Demand for ENA on Bybit surged just before execution, peaked before withdrawals began, then normalized
• Execution counterparties routed existing inventory to Bybit ahead of the plan

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

Final Thoughts

I've 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 (~$538 million at withdrawal)

This represents:

• Approximately 9.6% of total supply
• Approximately 25% of 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 found that simultaneously match the scale, timing, and footprint of the "on the open market" description in the filings.

This doesn't mean these transactions didn't occur on public venues, but rather that the "buyback" interpretation depends on whether they represent net market absorption or a withdrawal of supply previously positioned at these venues.

This is not a perfect attribution claim. On-chain attribution is inherently probabilistic. I am happy to incorporate additional context or different interpretations backed by on-chain data.

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

(11) Ethena-Controlled Wallet 0xB2af973905F05BC82bf97486b6aB883598D98298

(12) PIPE #2 Execution Wallet 0x631ee55b8ecd7afb53ec30211a082691a4cbe3ae

(13) PIPE #2 Coinbase Transaction 0x0563d67d3133d48ee5198fdd767adbcafa56e7f21e1b97bf8162322f4d75bab1

(14) PIPE #2 Treasury → CB Prime Outflow 0x5152627b344638435633a019236e89d5aa8b4dfeb2d3888d624c2094339aa520

(15) PIPE #