Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Ethena’s ENA token with a price target of $2 by the end of 2028, roughly seven times the current price near $0.28, in a note from Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research.
The forecast, published on September 30, implies ENA would outperform both bitcoin and ether over the same period. Kendrick’s team puts bitcoin at $300,000 and ether at $18,000 by the end of 2028, gains the bank expects ENA to beat. The token traded at about $0.27 on the day of the note, up more than 7 percent over 24 hours.
Kendrick set two markers on the way: $0.42 by the end of 2026 and $1.10 by the end of 2027. The bank’s case rests less on token momentum than on a mechanical link between Ethena’s stablecoin supply and token buybacks. It is the first time a major global bank has published a price path for a mid-cap DeFi governance token, and the methodology reads more like an equity cash-flow model than the usual chart work.
The buyback engine
Ethena holders approved a fee switch through a Snapshot vote in early September, with governance confirming the result on September 8. The mechanism routes a share of protocol revenue into purchases of ENA on the open market. Standard Chartered’s model turns that flow into a price path.
At $25 billion in USDe supply, the bank estimates the mechanism could generate about $375 million in annual buybacks, assuming a 6 percent gross protocol yield and a 25 percent net revenue take rate. If USDe reached $40 billion, ENA purchases could amount to roughly 23 percent of the token’s current market value each year, assuming the price stayed flat. The bank does not expect that ratio to persist: investors would capitalize the expected stream of purchases into the valuation, pushing the token higher and shrinking buybacks as a share of market cap.
| Forecast date | ENA target | Implied upside from $0.27 |
|---|---|---|
| End of 2026 | $0.42 | about 56% |
| End of 2027 | $1.10 | about 307% |
| End of 2028 | $2.00 | about 640% |
USDe needs to grow eightfold
The whole path depends on supply. Standard Chartered expects USDe outstanding to rise from $4.9 billion today to about $40 billion by the end of 2028, inside a stablecoin market the bank forecasts at $2 trillion. USDe peaked near $15 billion in 2025 and has since fallen, so the target requires both a recovery and then sustained expansion past the old high.
Ethena ranks as the fourth-largest stablecoin issuer behind Tether, Circle and Sky, and second among issuers of yield-bearing stablecoins behind Sky. Yield-bearing designs account for about 5 percent of the broader stablecoin market today, according to the bank’s note, which leaves room for the category to take share as more holders look for on-chain dollar yield.
The original yield engine behind USDe, the basis trade of holding spot crypto against short perpetual futures positions, has produced smaller returns since 2024. Ethena has pushed into new sources: real-world assets, DeFi and institutional lending, liquid stablecoins, and basis trades tied to equities and commodities. Those strategies currently produce a blended yield of 5.2 percent, according to the report. Standard Chartered separately forecasts the tokenized-asset market growing from about $350 billion to $4 trillion by the end of 2028, widening the pool Ethena could lend against.
What has to go right
The bank itself lists the checkpoints. USDe must first cross the $7.5 billion fee-switch threshold and reclaim its previous peak before the buyback engine runs at meaningful scale. Beyond that, Ethena has to show the newer yield strategies can absorb tens of billions of dollars without compressing returns. The 6 percent return used in the framework has not held across full market cycles, and the higher revenue-capture tiers remain untested at the scale the forecast assumes.
Stablecoin competition adds another layer of risk. Tether and Circle keep tightening their grip on distribution, and US regulators continue to shape the rules for yield-bearing designs, which sit closer to securities territory than plain payment stablecoins. Any restriction on yield to US holders would cap part of the addressable market the $40 billion forecast leans on.
The note also lands in a market where bank research on crypto tokens remains rare. Kendrick’s team was among the first from a major bank to publish price paths for bitcoin and ether, and the ENA coverage extends the practice down the market cap curve. Whether the $2 target ages well depends almost entirely on one number: USDe supply. Everything else in the model, the fee split, the yield, the buyback stream, follows from how much capital parks in the stablecoin.
Early test within months
Traders will get an early read well before 2028. If USDe stalls below the $7.5 billion threshold through 2027, the intermediate targets fall with it. If supply reclaims its 2025 peak, the path toward Kendrick’s end-2028 markers stays live, and ENA becomes the largest test yet of whether fee-switch buybacks can do for a governance token what they have done for public equities.
The market reaction so far has been measured. ENA’s 7 percent gain on the day of the note is modest for an 8x price path, which suggests traders are treating the forecast as a scenario rather than a promise. Ethena’s own communications have leaned on the fee switch as the story: the protocol’s September vote passed with broad support, and the foundation has framed buybacks as the main channel for value accrual going forward.
For the wider stablecoin sector, the note is another signal that yield-bearing designs are becoming an investable theme rather than a curiosity. If a $2 trillion market materializes by 2028, the split between payment stablecoins and yield-bearing ones will matter for issuers, for regulators, and for the tokens that sit above them in the stack. Ethena, for now, is the largest pure bet on that split.