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Ethena CEO says stablecoin growth needs real-world distribution
Ethena’s USDe grew from zero to almost $15 billion in assets within 18 months, and the CEO expects reward-bearing stablecoin supply to reach $100 billion to $200 billion in three to five years.
Stablecoin infrastructure is becoming a more central part of crypto, and Ethena Labs CEO Guy Young argued at Consensus Hong Kong 2026 that the next phase of growth depends on reaching users through mainstream financial channels rather than crypto-native tools, according to ETF Trends. Young said USDe, Ethena’s yield-bearing synthetic dollar, expanded from zero to nearly $15 billion in assets within its first 18 months.
Young said USDe supply later settled between $5.5 billion and $6.0 billion. He also described USDe as operating like a deposit, where users post collateral and receive a return generated by underlying assets, while Ethena takes a smaller cut than some rivals and routes remaining value to the protocol and ENA, Ethena’s separate token.
According to Young, ongoing debate in the sector includes whether protocols should use ENA token buybacks to signal confidence. He pushed back on early buybacks, saying they can send the wrong message for a startup still scaling, and argued for reinvestment instead.
On the broader outlook, Young said stablecoins could become a multi-trillion-dollar sector within five years, with reward-bearing products like USDe reaching $100 billion to $200 billion in supply in three to five years. He added that issuers should not assume new adoption will come from self-custody wallet users, and pointed to Ethena’s institutional rollout of iUSDe during 2026 as an example.