Changpeng Zhao’s YZi Labs deepens stake in stablecoin issuer Ethena

Tech-focused venture capital firm YZi Labs has increased its stake in Ethena, the stablecoin issuer behind USDe, which will assist the digital dollar’s adoption across decentralized and centralized platforms.

The investment will assist Ethena USDe’s (USDe) expansion on BNB Chain while enabling Ethena to continue building its USDtb stablecoin and an institutional settlement layer, “Converge,” Changpeng Zhao’s YZi Labs said in a statement on Friday.

USDtb is backed by short-duration treasury assets, including BlackRock’s BUIDL, while Converge is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chain focused on tokenizing real-world assets.

The move supports YZi’s mission to “support open, scalable digital dollar infrastructures that can serve as a backbone of efficiency and liquidity for the entire financial ecosystem.”

Ethena Labs CEO Guy Young added: “The holy grail of digital dollar distribution has always been embedding stable, yield-bearing assets directly into the core of the crypto economy.

“With USDe now scaling across exchanges, DeFi protocols, and global user bases, that vision is becoming a reality.”

Source: YZi Labs

The stablecoin adoption comes as the US Treasury estimated in April that the $295 billion market would boom to $2 trillion by 2028. Momentum was boosted in July by US President Trump’s signing of the GENIUS Act, seen as one of the most comprehensive stablecoin laws to date.

USDe use cases to expand on BNB Chain

YZi, formerly Binance Labs, first invested in Ethena through its Season 6 Incubation Program in February 2024, before USDe’s public launch. USDe’s synthetic dollar is backed mainly by cryptocurrencies and is stabilized through a delta-neutral hedging strategy that keeps its value pegged to $1.

USDe’s expansion on BNB Chain will build on its April deployment with new money markets, protocol integrations, and ecosystem partnerships already underway, YZi said.

Since launching, USDe has soared to a $14 billion market cap — trailing only Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC) at $171.5 billion and $73.9 billion, respectively, CoinGecko data shows. Increased adoption of USDe could allow it to slice into USDT and USDC’s dominance and broaden its use across the crypto ecosystem.

USDe may see adoption on Hyperliquid competitor

It comes as YZi — which manages $10 billion worth of assets spread across crypto, AI and healthcare — recently promoted Hyperliquid rival Aster — a new decentralized perpetuals exchange platform that is set to integrate USDe as part of its ecosystem.

Ethena has also won investment support from trillion-dollar asset management firms Fidelity and Franklin Templeton, while crypto VC firm DragonFly also backs the stablecoin issuer.

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