Ethena’s USDe Grew to $2 Billion in 7 Weeks. Is It Safe? - Ep. 629

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Business News, Tech News

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. This week, Ethena was in the spotlight after the airdrop of ENA, its new governance token. Ethena’s flagship product, the “synthetic dollar” USDe has amassed a $2 billion market cap in less than two months. Meanwhile, ENA’s market capitalization sits around $1.4 billion, with a fully diluted valuation of $15.5 billion. In this episode, Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs, discusses the risks associated with Ethena, including custodial risks and counterparty risks to exchanges. Young also talks about the use cases of Ethena's governance token, and discusses the potential for Ethena to be integrated with DeFi and CeFi. Show highlights: An introduction to what Ethena is and how USDe works Why the team doesn't want to refer to USDe as a stablecoin, and prefers to use the term "synthetic dollar" What the risks of USDe are, including custody, counterparties, and smart contracts Why Guy is "pleased" with how the ENA airdrop went through How ENA will be used and what its role will be in the governance of Ethena Why Ethena is now onboarding Bitcoin as collateral Why Guy thinks that there's been an "exaggeration" regarding the situation with Maker and Aave Guy's response to the critics who say that Ethena is essentially Terra/Luna Whether USDe would only work in a bull market How the Ethena insurance fund works and what it aims to accomplish What's next for Ethena after onboarding Bitcoin, with Solana potentially being the next asset Thank you to our sponsors! Polkadot iTrustCapital Guest Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs. Previous appearance on Unchained: How Ethena's USDe Challenges Traditional Stablecoin Models Links Ethena: Unchained: What Is Ethena’s USDe Synethic Dollar? A Beginner’s Guide Decrypt: Ethena Just Launched to a $1.2 Billion Market Cap: Here’s What You Need to Know Dust on Crust by Arthur Hayes Airdrop: Unchained: Airdrops From Wormhole and Ethena Labs Set to Inject $2.4 Billion Into Crypto Market This Week Cointelegraph: Ethena will become highest revenue-generating crypto project — Delphi Labs CEO ENA Airdrop and Season 2: Sats Campaign Learn more: What Is a Crypto Airdrop? A Beginner’s Guide MakerDAO/Aave controversy: The Block: MakerDAO proposes allocating $600 million worth of DAI into USDe and sUSDe The Defiant: DeFi Projects Clash After MakerDAO Adds Ethena’s USDe As Collateral, Comparisons to Terra’s UST: The Defiant: Ethena Stablecoin’s 27% Yield is Triggering Terra-Induced PTSD Andre Cronje’s thoughts on USDe Cointelegraph: Ethena Labs founder clarifies USDe stability amid high yield worries Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It really is like a very weak surface level argument to like compare what Athena's doing to
0:05.4	Luna like really the core difference here you just got to think about what is actually
0:09.0	backing the stable assets really what I point to here as the core difference between
0:14.8	Alina and an Athena is that the backing is like real collateral that's
0:18.5	sitting behind the stable rather than like our own government's token.
0:22.3	Heads up everyone.
0:23.0	In the next few weeks, we're launching a new show on the Unchain Channel called
0:27.0	Bits and Bips, exploring how crypto and macro collide, one basis point at a time.
0:32.0	As you can guess, it's a show all about crypto. collide one basis point at a time.
0:33.0	As you can guess, it's a show all about crypto and macro topics and where they intersect.
0:37.6	We've started with some trial runs and they've been going so well, we decided to tease a few moments
0:42.1	in this podcast. The speakers you'll hear
0:44.4	throughout this episode include Ari Paul of Block Tower, James Seifert of
0:49.4	Bloomberg Intelligence, and Ram Alawalia of Luma of Wealth.
0:53.6	We'll play the first clip from Bits and Bips featuring Ari Now and then it'll be on to the main
0:58.4	show.
0:59.4	I've always been skeptical of Dallas in the short term because it's an immense undertaking there
1:04.2	people don't fully appreciate but I'm very bullish on the long-term conceptually and
1:07.7	disruptive I think they're going to be as disruptive as the birth of the corporation
1:11.6	was in enabling higher
1:15.0	that's scale and it comes down it's like when you when you enable a hundred X
1:20.1	speed increase you get more than incremental improvements.
	...

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