Author: Nay

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: Ethena sold $5.25 billion discounted 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" at exchanges, nearly 90% was sent to those exchanges by Ethena's own wallets before buy orders appeared. This "repurchase", which accounts for 25% of the circulating supply, raises the question: is it real market accumulation, or a carefully orchestrated inventory transfer?

StablecoinX, the funding vehicle for Ethena, has increased its holdings to 20.3% of the total ENA supply in less than a year. According to regulatory documents from the two rounds of PIPE financing, this structure can be summarized as:

• Investors provide cash and ENA tokens
• Cash is used to purchase locked ENA at a discount from Ethena
• Ethena uses the cash proceeds to buy ENA on the open market (nominal amount of approximately $570 million / about $525 million after fees)

The core issue is not whether ENA is purchased through exchanges. The question is whether these purchases represent real accumulation from the public market or whether a substantial portion of the apparent execution is actually completed with ENA inventory pre-positioned at exchanges by Ethena associated wallets.

On-chain, I identified clusters that strongly match the scale and timing of the announcements. Execution footprints suggest that the supply may have been phased into various exchanges before execution rather than acquired directly from the open market.

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

Disclaimer: This is a reconstruction based on public data to the best of my ability. Attribution is probabilistic, and certain interpretations may be incomplete.

Background

PIPE #1

On July 21, 2025, TLGY announced StablecoinX trading and an initial PIPE financing of approximately $360 million. The PIPE was divided into approximately $260 million (net) in cash and about $101 million in physical 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 (at that time a 30% discount), funded by the cash portion of the PIPE.

"The Ethena Foundation's subsidiary plans to use a market-making intermediary to sell the token proceeds... starting today to purchase ENA in public trading venues, further aligning the foundation's incentives with those of StablecoinX shareholders."

Source: sec.gov

PIPE #2

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

"Like the initial PIPE financing, the Ethena Foundation's subsidiary intends to use all cash proceeds... starting today to purchase ENA in the public market through a market-making intermediary..."

Source: sec.gov

The company later stated that with the additional PIPE financing, StablecoinX expected to hold over 3 billion ENA at the time of completion of the transactions.

StablecoinX Holdings

According to Inflecta data, StablecoinX currently holds 20.3% of the ENA supply (about 3.04 billion ENA). Each major accumulation was accompanied by a corresponding decrease in fiscal/internal personnel balances, consistent with the structure described in the documents.

The three steps include:

• Approximately 1.23 billion ENA batch (1) on July 23—consistent with the initial discounted ENA sales disclosed in PIPE #1
• Approximately 914.3 million ENA batch (2) on September 19—consistent with the additional discounted ENA sales in PIPE #2
• Approximately 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/$60 million contribution from Ethena finances

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

ENA Repurchase

Now, the most interesting part: execution in the public market.

In the two rounds of PIPE financing, about $525 million in cash (net) was allocated for the purchase of ENA, and the documents state that the Ethena Foundation’s subsidiary would use these proceeds to acquire ENA in the public market through market makers.

I identified two clusters that are consistent with the scale and timing of the announced plans. Before delving into these fund flows, it is 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's balance aggressively expanded, briefly surpassing Binance before collapsing.

PIPE #1 Observed Execution

Duration: August 20 - September 26

Observed total scale: 370 million ENA / approximately $266 million at withdrawal (vs. declared net of about $260 million)

Venue: Coinbase Prime, Binance

1. Coinbase Prime Portion

Composed of three Coinbase Prime hosted 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)

Totaling 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 strongly associated with Ethena accounted for approximately 89.3% of all external inflows to Coinbase Prime, depositing about 383.9 million ENA (approximately $278 million) through a single deposit wallet (7).

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

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

246.7 million ENA (approximately $194.5 million, in 5 transactions) on September 10—on the day the largest withdrawal occurred

In other words, most of the ENA later withdrawn from Coinbase Prime appears to originate from wallets controlled by Ethena.

2. Binance Portion

Made up of a single wallet (9), withdrawing 133.3 million ENA (approximately $86 million) from Binance between September 15 and 26 and withdrawing about $500,000 from Coinbase, almost entirely sent to wallets associated with Ethena and StablecoinX financing (10).

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

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

PIPE #2 Observed Execution

Duration: November 7 - February 12

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

Venue: Coinbase, Bybit

The execution converged into a single wallet (12)

1. Coinbase Portion

Consisting of a single transaction (13):

302.94 million ENA / $83 million on December 3.

Let's take a look at the fund flows into it:

Event Sequence:

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

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

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

November 17 - 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)

Summary: The transfer on December 3 was after the CB Prime → Coinbase injection, not an accumulation of supply held by Coinbase—rather, that Prime inventory was provided by Ethena finances. After the transaction, Coinbase's balance essentially returned to its starting point (approximately 140 million ENA).

2. Bybit Portion

The same execution wallet displayed two different accumulation phases:

November 7 – December 7: 440 million ENA (approximately $126.8 million), primarily in 25 million ENA increments

January 7 – February 12: 325 million ENA (approximately $62.2 million), also in 25 million ENA increments

CEX balances provide additional context.

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

While this period overlaps with investor distributions, the relative changes across exchanges are noteworthy:

Bybit: Binance's supply ratio shifted from about 1:3 at the end of April

Peaking around 1.1:1 on November 6

Then recovering to about 1:3 after the planned conclusion

What stands out here is the timing: inventory seems to have concentrated on Bybit before execution, rather than being gradually built up during execution.

What caused this change? Data shows cross-exchange market-making routing (heavily favoring Bybit), ongoing investor distribution (mainly flowing to Binance), and some fund flows from Coinbase Prime.

Several explanations may exist:

Execution possibly occurred earlier at another exchange (e.g. Binance), and the supply was later repositioned to Bybit for withdrawal

Demand for ENA on Bybit surged just before execution, peaking before withdrawal began and then normalizing

Existing inventory was routed to Bybit by execution counterparties before the planned actions

The question is whether this aligns with the simple "public market accumulation during execution" explanation. I remain open to different interpretations and am willing to share the underlying 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:

Observed total: 1.44 billion ENA (approximately $538 million at withdrawal)

This corresponds to:

About 9.6% of the total supply

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

Some of the execution wallets shown above are generally associated with Ethena repurchase activities. More importantly, they represent significant observable clusters that I found to simultaneously match the scale, timing, and footprint of the "across the public market" described in the documents.

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

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

At this scale, execution cannot be 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 fiscal 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

+ hundreds of small transactions routed through intermediary wallets, such as: 0x39FC29dcffC02A01E8133F9cc5e0aCF464A9000C

(18) CB Prime → Coinbase internal routing 0x1dd792b91ab98a122c73c86aae73af0d6641df96ddcde187724bf5860cf1d893

(19) Dedicated Bybit ENA wallet 0x70167B76543C4a12b49B2f2B70CBf04D99345786

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