Author: Nay

Translation: Shenchao TechFlow

Guide by Shenchao: Ethena sold $5.25 billion worth of discount ENA tokens to StablecoinX through two rounds of PIPE financing, claiming it would use the funds to repurchase from the open market. However, on-chain data shows that of the 1.44 billion ENA "repurchased" on exchanges, nearly 90% had already been sent to exchanges by Ethena’s own wallets before the buying pressure appeared. Is this "repurchase," which occupies 25% of the circulating supply, a genuine market accumulation, or an elaborately planned inventory move?

Ethena's funding vehicle, StablecoinX, accumulated 20.3% of the total ENA supply in less than a year, starting from zero. According to regulatory documents from the two rounds of PIPE financing, this structure can be summarized as:

Investors provide cash and ENA in kind

Cash is used to purchase locked ENA at a discount from Ethena

Ethena uses these cash proceeds to purchase ENA on the open market (nominal amount approximately $570 million/about $525 million after expenses)

The core question is not whether ENA was purchased through exchanges. The question is whether these purchases represent genuine accumulation from the open market or if a significant portion of the apparent execution was actually completed using ENA inventory provided in advance to the exchanges by Ethena's associated wallets.

On-chain, I identified a cluster that closely matched the scale and timing of the announcements. The execution footprint indicates that supplies may have been deployed in phases to various exchanges before execution, rather than being acquired directly from the open market.

This analysis relies on entity-level attribution (via @inflecta_io). To maintain complete verifiability, the referenced fund flows are accompanied by relevant wallets and transaction records in the footnotes.

Disclaimer: This is an effort to reconstruct using publicly available 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 financing of approximately $360 million. The PIPE was divided into about $260 million (net) in cash and about $101 million 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 each (30% discount at that time) funded by the cash portion of PIPE.

"The subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation plans to use the proceeds from the token sale via intermediaries to further align the foundation's incentives with the shareholders of StablecoinX by buying ENA in open trading venues starting today."

Source: sec.gov

PIPE #2

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

"As with the initial PIPE financing, the subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation intends to use all cash proceeds... to buy ENA on the open market through intermediaries starting today..."

Source: sec.gov

The company later stated that, along with the additional PIPE financing, StablecoinX is expected to hold more than 3 billion ENA when the transaction is completed.

StablecoinX Holdings

According to Inflecta data, StablecoinX currently holds 20.3% of the ENA supply (about 3.04 billion ENA). Each major accumulation has been accompanied by a corresponding decrease in the fiscal/in-house personnel balance, consistent with the structure described in the documentation.

The three steps include:

About 1.23 billion ENA batch (1) on July 23 - consistent with the initial discounted ENA sale disclosed in PIPE #1

About 914.3 million ENA batch (2) on September 19 - consistent with the additional discounted ENA sale in PIPE #2

About 885 million ENA physical batch (3) from March 14-18 - from Ethena and investors, consistent with the physical portion of the PIPE structure, including 284.95 million ENA from Ethena's finances/$60 million contribution

Overall, the fund flows of StablecoinX closely align with the structure described in the documents.

ENA Repurchase

Now, the most interesting part: open market execution.

In the two rounds of PIPE financing, approximately $525 million (net) in cash was allocated for purchasing ENA, with documents stating that the Ethena Foundation's subsidiary would use these proceeds to obtain ENA on the open market through market makers.

I identified two clusters that aligned in scale and timing with the announced plan. Before delving into these fund flows, it’s worth looking at the supply dynamics at the exchange level:

ENA balances on Coinbase Prime appeared on July 16 - five days before PIPE #1 - and moved in large discrete steps

About 2% of the total supply was rebalanced between Coinbase and Coinbase Prime in November/December

Bybit balance saw aggressive expansion, briefly exceeding Binance before collapsing

Observed Execution of PIPE #1

Duration: August 20 - September 26

Total observed scale: 370 million ENA / approximately $266 million at withdrawal (vs declared net of approximately $260 million)

Location: Coinbase Prime, Binance

1. Coinbase Prime Portion

Consisting of three Coinbase Prime custodial wallets, withdrawals:

21.8 million ENA on August 20 (4) - later sent to PIPE #2 wallet (12), connecting the two clusters

187.5 million ENA on September 10 (5)

26.5 million ENA on September 11 (6)

Totalling approximately $180 million.

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

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

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

Most of this - about 316.7 million ENA - came from one of Ethena's main financial wallets (8):

70 million ENA (about $46.4 million) on September 5 - the day PIPE #2 was announced

246.7 million ENA (about $194.5 million, in 5 transactions) on September 10 - the day of the largest withdrawal

In other words, most of the ENA later withdrawn from Coinbase Prime seems to have originated from wallets controlled by Ethena.

2. Binance Portion

Composed of only one wallet (9), withdrawing 133.3 million ENA (about $86 million) from Binance from September 15 to 26 and withdrawing about $500,000 from Coinbase, nearly all sent to wallets associated with Ethena and StablecoinX financing (10).

The following image shows a wallet (11) that received about 8.4% of the total supply from the main financial wallet in 2024 - indicating Ethena financial control - and that distributed 150 million ENA to Binance and Bybit through nine intermediary wallets between July 21 (the day PIPE #1 was announced) and July 26.

From July 21-26, wallets strongly associated with Ethena distributed 150 million ENA to the exchanges through nine intermediaries. About 1.5 months later, another Ethena associated cluster withdrew about 134 million ENA from Binance.

Observed Execution of PIPE #2

Duration: November 7 - February 12

Total scale: 1.068 billion ENA / approximately $272 million at withdrawal (vs declared net of 265 million dollars)

Location: Coinbase, Bybit

Execution aggregated to a single wallet (12)

1. Coinbase Portion

Consisting of one transaction (13):

302.94 million ENA / 83 million dollars on December 3.

Let’s look at the fund flows into it:

Event sequence:

October 14: Ethena finances injected approximately 363 million ENA into Coinbase Prime (14)

November 1: 63.6 million ENA returned to the same financial wallet (15)

November 14: Coinbase Prime transferred approximately 281 million ENA to Coinbase (16)

November 17 - November 20: CB Prime and Coinbase rebalanced inventory through intermediary wallets (17)

December 3: About 227 million ENA moved from CB Prime to Coinbase (18) - less than a minute before Coinbase sent 303 million ENA to the execution wallet (12)

In summary: the transfer on December 3 occurred after the CB Prime → Coinbase injection, rather than being an accumulation of the supply held by Coinbase— and that Prime inventory was provided by Ethena finances. Post-transaction, Coinbase's balance essentially returned to the starting point (approximately 140 million ENA).

2. Bybit Portion

The same execution wallet shows two different accumulation phases:

November 7 - December 7: 440 million ENA (approximately $126.8 million), mainly in units of 25 million ENA

January 7 - February 12: 325 million ENA (approximately $62.2 million), also in units of 25 million ENA

CEX balances provide additional context.

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

While this overlap in time coincides with investor distribution, the relative changes across exchanges are noteworthy:

Bybit: Binance’s supply ratio changed from approximately 1:3 at the end of April

Peaked around 1.1:1 on November 6

Then returned to about 1:3 after the planned end

What's highlighted here is the timing: inventory appears to have concentrated on Bybit before execution rather than being gradually built up during execution.

What triggered this shift? The data suggests cross-exchange market maker routing (heavily skewed towards Bybit), ongoing investor distribution (mainly flowing to Binance), and some capital flows from Coinbase Prime.

There could be several explanations:

Execution occurred earlier on another exchange (e.g., Binance), with supply subsequently relocated to Bybit for withdrawal

Demand for ENA on Bybit spiked just before execution, reaching a peak before withdrawals began, then normalizing

Existing inventory was routed to Bybit by execution counterparties before the plan

The question is whether this aligns with a simplistic "accumulation in the open market during execution" explanation. I remain open to various interpretations and am willing to share supporting data.

Final Thoughts

I presented a reconstruction of on-chain activity during the execution window. The final chart summarizes the fund flows discussed in the article:

Total observed: 1.44 billion ENA (approximately $538 million at withdrawal)

This corresponds to:

About 9.6% of the total supply

About 25% of the free float (calculated as total supply minus finances, StablecoinX, and locked insiders)

Some of the execution wallets shown above are typically associated with Ethena repurchase activities. More importantly, they represent a significant observable cluster that I found that simultaneously matches the scale, timing, and footprint described in the documents regarding "across public markets."

The implication is not that these transactions did not occur in public venues, but that the interpretation of the "repurchase" depends on whether they represent net market absorption or are withdrawals of previously positioned supply in these venues.

This is not a claim of perfect attribution. On-chain attribution is inherently probabilistic. If there is additional context or different interpretations supported by on-chain data, I would be happy to incorporate them.

At this scale, execution could not have been invisible.

Footnotes

(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: 0xF2e2f6827AB893d636eb98F3Aac81E850880DA83

(8) Ethena financial 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 finances → CB Prime outflow 0x5152627b344638435633a019236e89d5aa8b4dfeb2d3888d624c2094339aa520

(15) PIPE #2 CB Prime→finances outflow 0xd42b531494d2c4c8ed8c93cf8cac13812fb7cb7b6e07805e06eecb1d9dc99d63

(16) CB Prime→Coinbase outflow 0x0606edcf12e084271b6e2547d3ce2bc20300d84574bdc95740be9259d718fd35

(17) CB Prime → Coinbase internal routing example 0xe6406faee21f3f236956195c586fab1592240adc698eabfb166644ae17f5e95d 0x9e73cf8043903e6fa2ccb7a8646c855f8c9d3f6a39995ba790fa1bcd1d181df9

+ Through intermediary wallets + router hundreds of small transactions, such as: 0x39FC29dcffC02A01E8133F9cc5e0aCF464A9000C

(18) CB Prime→Coinbase internal routing 0x1dd792b91ab98a122c73c86aae73af0d6641df96ddcde187724bf5860cf1d893

(19) Dedicated Bybit ENA wallet 0x70167B76543C4a12b49B2f2B70CBf04D99345786