ENA回购疑云：StablecoinX持仓增长背后的真相

Original author: @gmnay_

Original compilation: 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 these cash proceeds to buy ENA on the open market (approximately $570 million, net ~$525 million after fees)

The core issue is not whether ENA is purchased through trading venues, but 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-related wallets.

On-chain, I identified clusters highly consistent with the announced scale and timing. The execution footprint suggests supply may have been staged across trading venues prior to 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 wallet 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. The PIPE consisted of approximately $260 million (net) in cash and approximately $101 million in in-kind payments, including a $60 million contribution from the Ethena Foundation.

In simple terms, 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 PIPE of $530 million, consisting of approximately $265 million (net) in cash and approximately $248 million in physical ENA, with 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 intermediary market maker…

(Source: sec.gov)

The company later stated that with the additional PIPE, StablecoinX is expected to hold over 3 billion ENA at closing.

StablecoinX Holdings

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

The three steps include:

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

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

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

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. 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 identified two clusters that closely match the announced plans in scale and timing. Before delving into these fund flows, it's worth looking at the supply dynamics at the venue level:

• ENA balance on Coinbase Prime 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 balance expanded aggressively, briefly surpassing Binance, then collapsed

Observed Execution - PIPE 1

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

Coinbase Prime Component

Consists of three Coinbase Prime Custody wallets that withdrew:

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

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

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

September 5: 70 million ENA (~$46.4 million) – exactly on the day of the PIPE #2 announcement.

September 10: 246.7 million ENA (~$194.5 million, in 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

Consists of a single wallet (9) that withdrew 133.3 million ENA (~$86 million) from Binance and approximately $500,000 from Coinbase between September 15 and 26, 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 a major treasury wallet in 2024 – indicating control by the Ethena treasury – and distributed 150 million ENA to Binance and Bybit via nine intermediary wallets between July 21 (the day of the PIPE 1 announcement) and July 26.

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 - PIPE 2

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

Execution ultimately converged into a single wallet (12)

Coinbase Component

Consists of a single transaction (13):

December 3: 302.94 million ENA / $83 million.

Let's trace the fund flows leading to this transaction:

Sequence of events:

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

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

Bybit Component

The same execution wallet shows two distinct accumulation phases:

• November 7 - December 7: 440 million ENA (~$126.8 million), primarily in units of 25 million ENA
• January 7 - February 12: 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 6 – the day before execution began.

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

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

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

What stands out here is the timing: inventory appeared to be concentrated on Bybit *before* execution, rather than being gradually accumulated *during* 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 supply was subsequently repositioned to Bybit for withdrawal
• Demand for ENA on Bybit surged just before execution, peaked before withdrawals began, and then normalized
• Execution counterparties routed existing inventory to Bybit prior to the plan

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

Final Thoughts

I 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 equates to:

• ~9.6% of the total supply
• ~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 found that simultaneously match the scale, timing, and footprint of the "on the open market" description in the filing documents.

This does not mean these transactions did not occur on public venues, but rather that interpreting them as "buybacks" depends on whether they represent net market absorption or a withdrawal of supply that was previously positioned at 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 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 #2 CB Prime → Treasury Outflow 0xd42b531494d2c4c8