Synthetic $ - USDe crypto native internet money by Ethena

[johnarb]

https://app.ethena.fi/stake

https://ethena-labs.gitbook.io/ethena-labs


USDe was launched recently, it's an interesting project to create a crypto native money equivalent to the US $, a synthetic US $

It's not a stablecoin like usdt or usdc, it is not backed 1-to-1 USD

It might be (unfairly) compared to Luna ust algorithmic stablecoin

USDe uses the trading markets (perpetual futures) to keep the value

Might be of interest to others. it has been wildly successful since launch

There's tremendous demand for non-volatile crypto with yields, the whole Crypto Ecosystem is worth over $2 Trillion and usdt is the biggest one

Disclosure, I have no position, yet, but considering it, the problem for me is the current 37% apy is not high enough, I can get much higher at different crypto platforms albeit with a higher risk, but imho, not considerably

Hi there,

As a non-US customer, i cannot purchase bitcoin via Paxos, so i have to purchase UCITS spot bitcoin ETF instead.

Here is the trade :
leg 1 - LONG spot bitcoin ETFs worth $6500
leg 2 - SHORT 1x micro bitcoin future contract worth $6500

maintenance margin increase + $9750 !

I asked the IBKR support why so much margin is required for a delta neutral trade : "we cannot offset the risk for the bitcoin underlying" they said.

Could you find another way to place the trade, if possible with leverage ? As a european resident, i do not have access to crypto exchanges trading futures such as Binance for instance. I think the +1.2% per month is a nice trade to be taken though...

Thanks !

https://twitter.com/x/status/1777034406030352656

 

[NoahA]

USDe was launched recently, it's an interesting project to create a crypto native money equivalent to the US $, a synthetic US $

I have heard a bit about this on the Digital Assets News channel with Rob. I see that Arthur Hayes is also involved. He made one good point that I liked, which is that the crypto space should be the ones coming up with a stablecoin, and not having to go back into the traditional financial arena in order to get it done.

But I really don't know anything about it, and 37% APY seems like its a scam... no? I mean this is even higher than Celius and BlockFi were paying, and look at what happened to them. Where does this yield come from?

 

[johnarb]

I have heard a bit about this on the Digital Assets News channel with Rob. I see that Arthur Hayes is also involved. He made one good point that I liked, which is that the crypto space should be the ones coming up with a stablecoin, and not having to go back into the traditional financial arena in order to get it done.

But I really don't know anything about it, and 37% APY seems like its a scam... no? I mean this is even higher than Celius and BlockFi were paying, and look at what happened to them. Where does this yield come from?

Crypto defi yields are very high right now, lots of crypto people are taking on leverage in many forms

The 37% APY is a variable rate

But to answer your question, it comes from the Eth native staking yield, and perpetual futures funding rates

https://ethena-labs.gitbook.io/ethena-labs/solution-overview/yield-explanation


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[MrMuppet]

@johnarb look into it a bit deeper. Several red flags with Ethena/USDe, especially with custody. Counterparty risk is insane here, I´d rather trust Tether

 

[johnarb]

@johnarb look into it a bit deeper. Several red flags with Ethena/USDe, especially with custody. Counterparty risk is insane here, I´d rather trust Tether

From my limited knowledge of USDe, the trust but verify, everything transparent and published is the main value proposition, Arthur Hayes even pointed to this on one of the interviews I watched

• Ethereum blockchain
• Copper shared-private key ownership digital asset custodian, heard on a youtube this is the insitutional traders solution to the FTX (CEXes) collapse
• Open-source https://github.com/ethena-labs

I was going to "invest" into USDe a week or so ago, but the Ethereum blockchain was a no-go for me, but in looking at the docs, it's mainly to simplify the process of minting USDe and the first portion of the yield for the staked USDe - sUSDe (native Ethereum staking yield)

This webpage publishes all their positions and the deposit addresses for the custodians. I'd figure the crypto bros sleuths would be able to sniff out any problems with their claims

https://app.ethena.fi/dashboards/positions

https://app.ethena.fi/dashboards/hedging/BTC

https://app.ethena.fi/dashboards/hedging/ETH

True, there are many (cex and dex) countparties listed for their hedging strategy and perpetual futures yield farming but that is the design-philosophy of Ethena native-crypto money, non-reliant on the TradFi banking systems, nor the TradFi rails

I would think a simultaneous "failure" of several of those counterparties would not be a catastrophic wipe out, just eyeballing how distributed the positions are

Anyway, Arthur never said this is a no-risk experiment, if anything, this is another attempt at having crypto-native internet money given the not-so-recent Dai concession of using US Treasuries as part of their collateral strategy

[For a period during the previous bull market, I tried to use as much as possible the algorithmic stablecoin MIM, so it just depends on how committed we are in trying to sever our risk-exposure to the banking system, vis-a-vis usdt, usdc, et al]

 

[johnarb]

On a very related note to the USDe synthetic $ is the Ethena governance token $ENA, it's like a stock ownership for the crypto project

That's the naive take on it

Truth be told, during the bull market, governance tokens, airdrops, liquidity integration, yield farms, staking, and much more are created for exit strategy, think like a stock IPO, all the founders become very rich

Wormhole just launched their governance token $W recently and there were many more before it within the past 6 months

During the bull market is when you want to release these things, even the meme coins creating billions of $ out of nowhere, Dog wif hat $Wif that Cnbc has mentioned a few times

Back to $Ena, with integration to other crypto projects, cross liquidity integration, lots of values are created and it's one big bull market party that will last for a while as funds and profits are recycled within the cryptos ecosystem, going to NFT's even, but not yet the NFT season quite yet

With the success of Ethena USDe synthetic $, the payoff to the project creators and backers and partners are obfuscated through the governance token $Ena

Nothing evil, but people gotta eat, they are not creating this synthetic $ only because of the goodness of their crypto bro hearts and ideologies


https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethena


gamification and partnerships with other crypto projects below on trying to increase the price of everyone's crypto assets (tokens)

https://app.ethena.fi/join

 

[MrMuppet]

• Copper shared-private key ownership digital asset custodian, heard on a youtube this is the insitutional traders solution to the FTX (CEXes) collapse

this is the problem

 

[johnarb]

this is the problem

Whoa! mind blown

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Correct me if I'm wrong in my understanding of Copper as it was in a passing video ad on Blockworks and I made assumptions on the mechanics


So, the ad mentioned that Copper is a solution to not giving up ownership of the digital crypto assets, meaning still self-custody of the private keys, but I'll assume that it's a shared (multi-sig) setup otherwise, Copper will not have any protection, either

So the Copper deposit addresses, the client can move the assets as well as the Copper team

If the deposit address has $100M, the client withdraws $20M, only $80M, if deposit $30M back, $110M, just a running account balance

Based on the value of the deposits in the address, Copper will allow the client to trade on all the major cexes, Binance, Bitmex, Huobi, Kucoin, I'm assuming through internal transfers within the cexes between client accounts

As the trades are initiated and the corresponding margin requirements are used, Copper withdraws the corresponding amount from the Copper deposit addresses to their own Copper-controlled wallets

So copper is like a prime broker (wirehouse?) for these cexes for the clients institutional traders

I mean this seems to me like the safest setup for Ethena, like I would give it an A+

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Any rumor of a hole in Copper balance sheet, start closing the positions on cexes, withdraw the crypto assets to Ethena-controlled wallets, start withdrawing from Copper shared-addresses to Ethena-controlled wallets

The professional custodian company Prime had a long time running rumor before finally going belly up, and this setup can prevent any loss or very minimal loss

And certainly no wipeout scenario as with what happened in FTX when many institutional traders had too much of their trading accounts frozen and could not withdraw within a couple of days the rumor started

I wish they would have used more dexes in addition to dydx, like GMX and GNS but they it might be because of liquidity, one thing I can say is that they are widely distributed looking at the list of cexes

PS:

Only the first Copper custodian address had a significant value of $152M, which means about 6.5% at risk with counterparty custodian since there are $2.372B worth of USDe in circulation

This matches their strategy of putting all value through their strategies of delta hedging the collateral deposits for USDe minting process

https://app.ethena.fi/dashboards/positions