The short version
- Ethena price: ENA closed Sunday 5.8% higher at $0.2069, the best day among the 37 biggest coins on Binance, while 28 of them fell.
- The news behind it is USDe going live on OKX’s X Layer and in OKX Wallet on Friday, but USDe supply has slipped to $4.58 billion, with only about $4.7 million on X Layer.
- The crew is watching the 50-day EMA at $0.1968 and USDe supply, which needs to reach $7.5 billion, $2.9 billion more, before ENA buybacks switch on.
The Ethena price did something few coins managed on Sunday: it went up. ENA closed the day 5.8% higher at $0.2069 on Binance, the best day of any large coin we tracked, while Bitcoin slipped 0.9% and Ethereum lost 1.2%. Of the 37 biggest coins trading on Binance, 28 ended Sunday in the red.
ENA trades at $0.2030 at the time of writing. The headlines point to one piece of news, USDe going live on OKX’s X Layer network. So is that what’s moving ENA, and does it bring the token any closer to the buybacks holders are waiting for?
Ethena announced the launch on Friday:
USDe is now live on @XLayerOfficial and OKX @wallet, with one-click USDe looping in OKX Wallet coming soon.
The first USDe integration on X Layer is the @aave v3 instance allowing OKX wallet users to access USDe directly onchain.
This is the first time the millions of users on
Why Is Ethena Up When the Market Is Down?
The story traders are buying is distribution. On Friday, October 23, at 12:09 Copenhagen time, Ethena posted that USDe, its dollar-pegged token, “is now live” on X Layer and in OKX Wallet. The first app to use it there is Aave v3, the lending market, so OKX Wallet users can lend and borrow against USDe without leaving the wallet.
More is promised. X Layer says liquidity provision and one-click USDe looping through OKX Wallet are “coming soon”. Looping means depositing USDe, borrowing against it and depositing again to multiply the yield, and every loop needs more USDe.
The timing is odd, though. ENA barely moved on Friday, closing 0.5% higher, and fell 1.9% on Saturday. The buying only showed up on Sunday afternoon: from 15:00 Copenhagen time ENA climbed from $0.1946 to $0.2077 in four hours, with the busiest hour of spot volume all day on Binance.
There is also a chart reason. ENA has closed above its 50-day EMA, now at $0.1968, on five of the last six days. Of the other 36 big coins we checked on Binance, only four sit above theirs. A coin that holds up in a weak market tends to draw buyers once the selling dries up.
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Is USDe Actually Growing?
Not yet. DefiLlama puts USDe’s supply at $4.58 billion this morning, down from $4.63 billion on the day of the X Layer launch and $4.93 billion a month ago. It peaked at $14.8 billion in October 2025.
The X Layer piece is still tiny. DefiLlama counts about $4.7 million of USDe on X Layer, roughly 0.1% of the total.
That matters because USDe isn’t a normal stablecoin backed by dollars in a bank. Ethena holds crypto and cash-like assets and shorts perpetual futures against the crypto part, so the position stays delta-neutral. The yield comes from the funding rate on those shorts and the interest on the reserves. More USDe means more revenue, and more revenue is what ENA holders want.
In other words, OKX’s millions of users can now reach USDe in a tap. Whether they actually mint it shows up in the supply number first, and that number is still falling.
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How Far Is ENA From the Buyback Trigger?
About $2.9 billion of USDe. ENA holders voted through the Ethena fee switch in September. Once USDe supply reaches the first milestone of $7.5 billion, 95% of the net revenue the Ethena Foundation earns from its business lines, including USDe savings and white-label stablecoins, goes to buying back ENA.
From $4.58 billion, that is a 64% climb. September showed it can move fast: Ethena’s quarterly governance update says USDe added over $700 million that month, on its way to $5.00 billion on September 27. Even at that pace, the trigger is four months away.
Supply from the token side is light this week. Tokenomist lists the next ENA unlock for Monday, November 2, at 08:00 Copenhagen time: 40.6 million ENA, about $8.2 million, going to the Foundation. Against $387 million in daily trading volume, that is small.
So the ENA buyback is a real mechanism with a real number attached. It just isn’t switched on, and Sunday’s move priced in some of the road to $7.5 billion before USDe started walking it.
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Ethena Price Analysis: Can ENA Hold the 50-Day EMA?
It has so far. Saturday’s close at $0.1954 dipped just under the line, Sunday took it straight back, and the $0.1941 support from October 8 sits right under it. Above, $0.2260, Wednesday’s high, has capped the last bounce.
The bigger picture is still a pullback. ENA ran from about $0.08 in August to $0.2946 on September 27 and is down 31% since, but it is still trading well above the 200-day EMA at $0.1609.
The levels the crew is watching:
- Bull case: a daily close above $0.2260 breaks the October range and opens the way to $0.2474, the October 12 high.
- Base case: ENA chops between $0.1941 and $0.2260 until USDe supply shows whether the X Layer launch brings new money.
- Bear case: a daily close under $0.1941 loses the 50-day EMA and points to $0.1744, the October 18 low.
The Ethena price has one of the strongest charts among the large altcoins right now. For the move to last, USDe supply has to start climbing toward $7.5 billion, and this week it fell.
In crypto since 2017, trading stocks for over 20 years. MBA. Follows the economic data and US markets closely.
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