Standard Chartered initiated research coverage of Ethena on September 30, forecasting the ENA token will reach $2.00 by the end of 2028, roughly 7x its current level of $0.28. The bank ranked Ethena as the fourth-largest stablecoin issuer overall and the second-largest issuer of yield-bearing stablecoins behind Sky, crediting USDe with becoming the fastest stablecoin to reach a $10 billion market cap.
Ethena responded to the coverage on X:
"They forecast potential USDe growth of ∼8x in the next 2 years as the convergence of DeFi and TradFi accelerates. Unclear why they are so bearish, but worth a read regardless."
Standard Chartered's bull case rests on three growth drivers
Standard Chartered's research note lays out the mechanics behind its forecast directly. The bank projects USDe outstanding could reach $40 billion by end-2028, an 8x increase from current levels, as yield-bearing stablecoins expand their share of the broader stablecoin market from roughly 5% today.
"Yield-bearing stablecoins are currently 5% of the stablecoin market; we expect this share to increase over time as users seek yield as well as stablecoin functionality, enabling Ethena to capture users and AUM," the bank wrote.
USDe's original yield mechanism relied on the crypto basis trade, holding long spot positions against short perpetual futures, which paid yields above 20% at times when funding rates ran high. Standard Chartered noted Ethena has since diversified beyond that single mechanism into real-world assets and basis on equity perpetuals, a shift the bank frames as making USDe's collateral base "highly sustainable" rather than dependent on volatile crypto funding rate cycles alone.
The bank forecasts real-world assets deployed on blockchains will grow from approximately $40 billion today to $2 trillion by end-2028, a scale that would directly expand the collateral base available to back USDe's growth.
How the buyback program ties token price to protocol revenue
Ethena introduced a buyback and burn program under which 95% of net revenue funds token repurchases and burns going forward. Standard Chartered's model treats this mechanism as the direct link between USDe's growth and ENA's price appreciation: as USDe scales toward $40 billion outstanding, the bank expects buybacks to become significant enough to sustain higher ENA pricing.
This structure mirrors a broader pattern also seen in Cronos Labs' recent tokenomics overhaul, where the CRO token similarly ties buybacks directly to platform revenue rather than relying on speculative demand alone. The mechanism creates a more direct valuation link between protocol usage and token price than traditional governance tokens have typically offered, since burns scale mechanically with revenue rather than through discretionary decisions.
The bank's year-end price targets show a steady climb: $0.42 by end-2026, $1.10 by end-2027, and $2.00 by end-2028, a trajectory it says would outpace its own projected gains for both Ethereum and Bitcoin over the same period.
The specific risks Standard Chartered flagged
The bank was direct about what could break the thesis.
"The main risk to this view is slower-than-expected growth in yield-bearing stablecoins," the report states, adding a more specific concern: "A specific risk to Ethena's asset backing is if RWAs deployed on blockchains do not scale as we expect them to."
Standard Chartered's track record on crypto price forecasts
Standard Chartered has built a reputation over the past two years for some of Wall Street's more aggressive digital asset price targets, having previously forecast Bitcoin reaching $120,000 by the end of 2025 and later revised that outlook upward as institutional adoption accelerated through spot ETF inflows. The bank's digital assets research team, which also covers Ethereum and other major tokens, has generally framed its forecasts around adoption metrics like stablecoin market share and institutional AUM growth rather than purely technical price patterns, a methodology consistent with how this Ethena note builds its target around USDe supply growth rather than speculative token demand.
The bank's comparison table also included implied price ratios: ETH-to-ENA and BTC-to-ENA, both of which show ENA appreciation outpacing its own Bitcoin and Ethereum year-end forecasts of $300,000 and $18,000 respectively by 2028. Standard Chartered's report was issued as a Global Research note dated September 30, 2026, with the bank noting the standard MiFID II opt-out disclosure required for research distribution in relevant jurisdictions.
Roman Zaika
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