Author: Nay

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Dive: Ethena sold $5.25 billion worth of discounted ENA tokens to StablecoinX through two rounds of PIPE funding, claiming it would use the money to buy back tokens from the open market. However, on-chain data shows that nearly 90% of the 1.44 billion ENA tokens "buyed back" from exchanges had already been transferred to exchanges through Ethena's own wallets before any buying activity occurred. Is this "buyback," representing 25% of the circulating supply, a genuine market accumulation or a carefully orchestrated inventory transfer?

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

• Investors are offered cash and physical ENA.
• Cash was used to purchase locked ENA at a discount from Ethena.
• Ethena used these cash proceeds to purchase ENA on the open market (notional amount approximately $570 million / approximately $525 million after fees).

The core issue isn't whether ENA was purchased through exchanges. The question is whether these purchases represent genuine open market accumulation, or whether a significant portion of what appears to be execution was actually accomplished using ENA stockpiled by Ethena's associated wallets and provided to exchanges beforehand.

On-chain, I identified clusters that closely matched the size and timing of the announcements. Execution footprints indicated that the supply was likely deployed to various exchanges in stages before execution, rather than being obtained directly from the open market.

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

Disclaimer: This is an attempt to reconstruct using publicly available data. Attributions are probabilistic, and some interpretations may be incomplete.

background

PIPE #1

On July 21, 2025, TLGY announced the StablecoinX transaction and an initial PIPE funding round 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 short, Ethena sold locked ENA at the disclosed price of $0.21056 per token (a 30% discount at the time), funded by PIPE’s cash portion.

"The Ethena Foundation subsidiary plans to use proceeds from token sales through intermediary market makers... to purchase ENA on public exchanges starting today, further aligning the Foundation's incentives with those of StablecoinX shareholders."

 Source: sec.gov 

PIPE #2

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

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

 Source: sec.gov 

The company later stated that, with the additional PIPE funding, StablecoinX expected to hold more than 3 billion ENA upon completion of the transaction.

StablecoinX holdings

According to Inflecta data, StablecoinX currently holds 20.3% of the ENA supply (approximately 3.04 billion ENA). Each major accumulation is accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the treasury/insider balance, consistent with the structure described in the documentation.

The three steps include:

• Approximately 1.23 billion ENA in lots (1) were sold on July 23 – consistent with the initial discounted ENA sale disclosed in PIPE #1.
• Approximately 914.3 million ENA in batch (2) were sold on September 19 – consistent with the additional discounted ENA sale in PIPE #2.
• Approximately 885 million ENA physical lots (3) were delivered between March 14 and 18 – from Ethena and investors, consistent with the physical portion of the PIPE structure, including a contribution of 284.95 million ENA / approximately $60 million from Ethena's treasury.

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

ENA buyback

Now, the most interesting part: open market execution.

In the two rounds of PIPE financing, approximately $525 million in cash (net) was allocated to purchase ENA. The document states that the Ethena Foundation subsidiary will use these proceeds to acquire ENA in the open market through market makers.

I identified two clusters that aligned with the announcement schedule in both size and timing. Before delving into these fund flows, it's worth examining the supply dynamics at the exchange level:

Coinbase Prime's ENA balance appeared on July 16th—five days before PIPE #1—and moved in large, discrete steps.

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

Bybit aggressively expanded its balance, briefly surpassing Binance before collapsing.

Observed execution of PIPE #1

Duration: August 20 - September 26

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

Venues: Coinbase Prime, Binance

1. Coinbase Prime section

It consists of three Coinbase Prime custodian wallets, for withdrawals:

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

187.5 million ENA on September 10 (5)

26.5 million ENA tokens were issued on September 11 (6).

The total is approximately US$180 million.

A key observation: Coinbase Prime had no substantial ENA balances until mid-July.

So the question becomes: where do these supplies 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 approximately 383.9 million ENA (approximately US$278 million) through a single deposit wallet (7).

The majority of these—approximately 316.7 million ENA—came from one of Ethena's main treasury wallets (8):

70 million ENA tokens (approximately $46.4 million) were released on September 5th—the day PIPE #2 was announced.

246.7 million ENA tokens (approximately $194.5 million, in 5 transactions) were withdrawn on September 10th—the day of the largest withdrawal.

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

2. Binance section

Composed of only one wallet (9), it withdrew 133.3 million ENA (approximately US$86 million) from Binance and approximately US$500,000 from Coinbase between September 15 and 26, almost all of which was sent to wallets (10) associated with Ethena and StablecoinX funding.

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

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

Execution observed in PIPE #2

Duration: November 7 - February 12

Total size: 1.068 billion ENA / approximately $272 million at the time of withdrawal (vs. net reported amount of $265 million)

Venues: Coinbase, Bybit

Execution convergence to a single wallet (12)

1. Coinbase section

Composed of a single transaction (13):

302.94 million ENA / $83 million on December 3.

Let's look at the flow of funds flowing into it:

Event sequence:

October 14: Ethena's treasury injected approximately 363 million ENA into Coinbase Prime (14)

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

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

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

December 3: Approximately 227 million ENA moved from CB Prime to Coinbase (18) – less than a minute before Coinbase sent 303 million ENA to the executive wallet (12).

In summary: The December 3rd transfer occurred after the CB Prime → Coinbase injection, not due to the accumulation of Coinbase's supply—and that Prime inventory was provided by Ethena's treasury. After the transaction, Coinbase's balance essentially returned to its starting point (approximately 140 million ENA).

2. Bybit section

The same execution wallet displays two different accumulation phases:

November 7 – December 7: 440 million ENA (approximately US$126.8 million), primarily in units of 25 million ENA.

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

The CEX balance provides additional context.

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

Although this period overlaps with investor distribution, the relative changes across exchanges are noteworthy:

Bybit: Binance supply ratio was approximately 1:3 at the end of April.

It peaked at approximately 1.1:1 on November 6th.

Then, after the plan ends, it will be restored to approximately 1:3.

The key point here is timing: the inventory appears to be concentrated in Bybit before execution, rather than being gradually built up during execution.

What caused this shift? Data shows cross-exchange market maker routing (severely biased towards Bybit), continued investor distribution (primarily flowing to Binance), and some fund flows from Coinbase Prime.

There are several possible explanations:

The execution occurred earlier on another exchange (such as Binance), and the supply was later repositioned to Bybit for withdrawal.

Demand for ENA on Bybit surged just before the execution, peaking before withdrawals began, and then returned to normal.

Existing inventory is routed to Bybit by the execution counterparty before the plan is implemented.

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

Final thoughts

I presented the 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 US$538 million at the time of withdrawal)

This corresponds to:

Approximately 9.6% of the total supply

Approximately 25% of the supply is in free circulation (calculated as total supply minus treasury, StablecoinX, and locked insiders).

Some of the execution wallets shown above are typically associated with Ethena buyback activities. More importantly, they are significant observable clusters I discovered that simultaneously match the scale, timing, and footprint of the "cross-public market" activity described in the documentation.

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

This is not a claim of perfect attribution. On-chain attribution is inherently probabilistic. I would be happy to include any additional context or alternative interpretations supported by on-chain data.

At this scale, execution cannot be invisible.

footnote

(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's financial wallet 0xcfc40d4ECa21F60D329F1E6b9B3D6069EaA20BBC

(9) PIPE #1 Binance Executive Wallet: 0x9c7B3C57632aB8BED71a4dDbC950d8C009DFe7aA

(10) Ethena controls wallet 0x8e771f7bAb34a3b4491e03F22f005483E5c375f5

(11) Ethena controls wallet 0xB2af973905F05BC82bf97486b6aB883598D98298

(12) PIPE #2 executes wallet 0x631ee55b8ecd7afb53ec30211a082691a4cbe3ae

(13) PIPE #2 Coinbase transaction 0x0563d67d3133d48ee5198fdd767adbcafa56e7f21e1b97bf8162322f4d75bab1

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

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

(16) CB Prime → Coinbase outflow 0x0606edcf12e084271b6e2547d3ce2bc20300d84574bdc95740be9259d718fd35

(17) Example of CB Prime <-> Coinbase internal routing: 0xe6406faee21f3f236956195c586fab1592240adc698eabfb166644ae17f5e95d 0x9e73cf8043903e6fa2ccb7a8646c855f8c9d3f6a39995ba790fa1bcd1d181df9

Hundreds of small transactions via intermediary wallet and router, such as: 0x39FC29dcffC02A01E8133F9cc5e0aCF464A9000C

(18) CB Prime → Coinbase internal route 0x1dd792b91ab98a122c73c86aae73af0d6641df96ddcde187724bf5860cf1d893

(19) Dedicated Bybit ENA wallet 0x70167B76543C4a12b49B2f2B70CBf04D99345786