Standard Chartered forecasts ENA at $2 and USDe at $40 billion by 2028

Standard Chartered initiated coverage of Ethena on Wednesday and forecast that its ENA token will reach $2 by the end of 2028. ENA traded at $0.26 on Wednesday, according to The Block's price data. Standard Chartered's target implies roughly 669% upside from that price. The bank expects USDe's outstanding supply to grow more than eightfold, from $4.9 billion today to about $40 billion by the end of 2028. Ethena is the fourth-largest stablecoin issuer, behind Tether, Circle and Sky. Ethena ranks second among issuers of yield-bearing stablecoins, behind Sky. Yield-bearing stablecoins account for about 5% of the broader stablecoin market today, according to Standard Chartered. Standard Chartered said Ethena is broadening USDe's sources of yield as returns from crypto basis trades have fallen. The bank identified real-world assets, decentralized finance and institutional lending, liquid stablecoins, and equity- and commodity-linked basis trades as newer yield sources. Ethena has also expanded into tokenized equities through Binance's bStocks, using those assets to back USDe and Binance equity perpetuals to hedge the exposure. Standard Chartered forecasts that tokenized assets, including stablecoins and other real-world assets, will grow from about $350 billion today to $4 trillion by the end of 2028. Ethena's fee switch passed with 100% of votes and calls for programmatic ENA buybacks using 95% of net revenue from businesses under the Ethena brand. Standard Chartered calculates that annualized buybacks would equal about 23% of ENA's circulating value if USDe reaches $40 billion by the end of 2028 and ENA stays at its current price. The bank considers that buyback rate unsustainable and argues that ENA's price would need to rise until the rate falls. Standard Chartered cited Uniswap as a comparison, saying its annualized buyback rate has settled at roughly 3% to 4% since its fee switch was activated in December 2025. The bank said UNI has roughly tripled since it began covering the token in June. Standard Chartered said slower-than-expected growth in yield-bearing stablecoins is the main risk to its forecast. The bank said weaker growth in real-world assets deployed on blockchains poses an additional risk because Ethena increasingly relies on those assets for yield.