ENA Buyback Controversy: Is the Surge in StablecoinX Holdings Genuine, or Are Public Market Purchases Faked?

Original Title: $ENA buybacks: what happened?
Original Author: Nay, Inflecta
Original Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

StablecoinX, as Ethene's treasury tool, has grown from holding 0% of the ENA supply to 20.3% in less than a year. According to the two rounds of PIPE disclosure documents, the structure can be summarized as follows:

· Investors provided cash and physical ENA

· Cash was used to purchase locked ENA from Ethene at a discounted price

Ethene used these cash proceeds to buy ENA on the open market (approximately $570 million gross, netting around $525 million after fees)

The core issue is not whether ENA was purchased through exchanges, but whether these purchases represent net absorption on the open market or if a significant portion of what appears to be open market executions were actually facilitated by ENA inventory previously provided to these exchanges by Ethene-associated wallets.

On-chain, I have identified clusters highly consistent in scale and timing with announcements. The execution footprint suggests that supply may have been staged across exchanges prior to execution, rather than directly sourced from the open market.

This analysis relies on entity-level attribution (via @inflecta_io). To ensure full verifiability, the referenced fund flows are accompanied by underlying wallet and transaction records (see footnotes).

This is the best effort reconstruction based on publicly available data. Attribution is probabilistic, and some interpretations may be incomplete.

Background

PIPE 1

On July 21, 2025, TLGY announced the StablecoinX transaction along with an initial approximately $360 million PIPE. The PIPE was split into approximately $260 million (net) cash and around $101 million physical payments, including a $60 million contribution from the Ethene Foundation.

In essence, Ethene sold locked ENA at a disclosed price of $0.21056 per token (with a 30% discount at the time) in the PIPE, with funding provided by the cash portion.

A subsidiary of the Ethene Foundation plans to use the proceeds from the token sale... to start purchasing ENA on public trading platforms from today onwards, further aligning the Foundation's incentives with StablecoinX shareholders.

(Source: sec.gov)

PIPE 2

On September 5, 2025, the parties announced an additional $530 million PIPE, consisting of approximately $265 million (net) in cash and approximately $248 million in ENA in-kind, with the ENA in-kind locked at a price of $0.29 per ENA.

Similar to the initial PIPE, a subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation intends to use all cash proceeds... to purchase ENA on the open market starting today through an intermediary market maker...

(Source: sec.gov)

The company later stated that with the additional PIPE, StablecoinX is expected to hold over 3 billion ENA upon settlement.

StablecoinX Holdings

According to Inflecta data, StablecoinX currently holds 20.3% of the ENA supply (approximately 3.04 billion ENA). Each large-scale accumulation corresponds to a corresponding reduction in the treasury/internal party balances, consistent with the structure described in the filing.

The three tranches include:

· Approximately 1.23 billion ENA (First Tranche) on July 23 – consistent with the initial discounted ENA sale disclosed in PIPE 1

· Approximately 914.3 million ENA (Second Tranche) on September 19 – consistent with the additional discounted ENA sale in PIPE 2

· Approximately 885 million ENA in-kind batch (Third Tranche) on March 14-18 – from Ethena and investors, consistent with the physical portion of the PIPE structure, including 284.95 million ENA from the Ethena treasury / approximately $60 million contribution

StablecoinX Physical Contribution (Source: inflecta.io)

Overall, the fund flow of StablecoinX closely aligns with the structure described in the disclosure document.

ENA Buyback

Now, onto the most interesting part: the public market execution.

In two rounds of PIPE, approximately $5.25 billion (net) in cash was allocated to purchase ENA, with the disclosure document stating that a subsidiary of the Ethena Foundation will use these proceeds to buy back ENA on the public market through a market maker.

I have identified two clusters that align in scale and timing with the announced plan. Before delving into these fund flows, it's worth taking a look at the supply dynamics at the exchange level:

· Coinbase Prime's ENA balance emerged on July 16, five days before PIPE 1 announcement, and exhibited large, diversified movements

· Between November and December, approximately 2% of the total supply rebalanced between Coinbase and Coinbase Prime

· Bybit's balance aggressively expanded, briefly surpassing Binance, before collapsing

PIPE 1 Execution Observations

· Duration: August 20 - September 26

· Total observed scale: 370 million ENA / approximately $266 million (at cash out) (compared to the disclosed net of approximately $260 million)

· Exchanges: Coinbase Prime, Binance

Coinbase Prime Tranche

Consisting of three Coinbase Prime Custody wallets, the following withdrawals were made:

· August 20 - 21.8 million ENA (4) — subsequently sent to PIPE 2 wallet (12), connecting the two clusters

· September 10 - 187.5 million ENA (5)

· September 11 - 26.5 million ENA (6)

Totaling approximately $180 million.

Key observation: Coinbase Prime had no substantial ENA balance before mid-July.

So the question is: where did this supply come from?

Between July 16 and September 11, wallets highly associated with Ethena accounted for approximately 89.3% of all external Coinbase Prime inflows, depositing about 383.9 million ENA tokens (approximately $278 million) through a single deposit wallet (7).

The majority—around 316.7 million ENA tokens—of this came from a major treasury wallet (8) controlled by Ethena.

On September 5, 70 million ENA tokens (approximately $46.4 million) were deposited—coinciding with the announcement of PIPE #2.

On September 10, 246.7 million ENA tokens (approximately $194.5 million, in 5 transactions) were withdrawn—coinciding with the largest withdrawal to date.

In other words, a significant amount of ENA subsequently withdrawn from Coinbase Prime seems to originate from wallets controlled by Ethena.

Binance Segment

Comprised of a single wallet (9), this wallet withdrew 133.3 million ENA tokens (approximately $86 million) from Binance and around $500,000 from Coinbase between September 15 and 26, with almost all of it being sent to wallets associated with Ethena and StablecoinX fundraising (10).

The following diagram illustrates a wallet (11) that received approximately 8.4% of the total supply from a main treasury wallet in 2024—indicating Ethena treasury control—and distributed 150 million ENA tokens to Binance and Bybit through nine intermediary wallets between July 21 (PIPE 1 announcement day) and July 26.

Between July 21-26, a wallet closely associated with Ethena distributed 150 million ENA tokens to exchanges through nine intermediary wallets. Approximately 1.5 months later, another Ethena-associated cluster withdrew around 134 million ENA tokens from Binance.

Observations from PIPE 2 Execution

· Duration: November 7 - February 12

· Total Supply: 1.068 billion ENA / ~$2.72 billion (at withdrawal) (vs. reported net of $2.65 billion)

· Platforms: Coinbase, Bybit

Execution eventually converged to a single wallet (12)

Coinbase Segment

Contained only one transaction (13):

December 3 - 302.94 million ENA / $83 million.

Let's take a look at the fund flow leading to this transaction:

Event sequence:

· October 14: Ethena Treasury injects about 363 million ENA into Coinbase Prime (14)

· November 1: 63.6 million ENA returned to the same treasury wallet (15)

· November 14: Coinbase Prime transfers around 281 million ENA to Coinbase (16)

· November 17-20: CB Prime and Coinbase rebalance inventory via intermediary wallet (17)

· December 3: About 227 million ENA moved from CB Prime to Coinbase (18) — less than a minute before Coinbase sends 303 million ENA to the execution wallet (12)

Summary: The December 3 transfer seems to be a result of CB Prime → Coinbase injection rather than a gradual accumulation of supply held by Coinbase — with the Prime inventory being furnished by the Ethena Treasury. Post-transaction, Coinbase's balance roughly returned to the starting point (about 140 million ENA).

Bybit Segment

The same execution wallet shows two distinct accumulation phases:

· November 7 - December 7: 440 million ENA (approximately $126.8 million), primarily in increments of 25 million ENA

· January 7 - February 12: 325 million ENA (approximately $62.2 million), also in 25 million ENA increments

CEX balance provided additional context.

Bybit's balance grew from around 240 million ENA at the end of April to around 1.05 billion ENA on November 6 — the day before the execution began.

While this period overlapped with investor distribution, the relative changes between venues are notable:

· Bybit:Binance supply ratio went from around 1:3 at the end of April

· Peaked at around 1.1:1 on November 6

· Then returned to around 1:3 post-execution

Arkham's "Token Balance History" can be used for cross-validation of the data.

The highlighted point here is the timing: the inventory seems to have concentrated on Bybit before the execution rather than gradually accumulating during the execution.

What could have led to this shift? Data shows cross-exchange market maker routing (heavily skewed towards Bybit), along with ongoing investor distribution (primarily flowing to Binance), and some fund flows from Coinbase Prime.

There are several potential explanations:

· Execution took place on another venue (e.g., Binance) earlier, then the supply was rerouted to Bybit for withdrawals

· Demand for ENA on Bybit surged just before the execution, peaked before withdrawals began, then normalized

· Counterparties for the execution routed their existing inventory to Bybit before the plan

The question is whether this aligns with a simple "accumulation on the open market during execution" interpretation. I welcome alternative explanations and am happy to share underlying data.

Final Thoughts

I reconstructed on-chain activity within the execution window. The final chart summarizes the fund flows discussed in the article:

Observed Total Supply: 1.44 billion ENA (equivalent to approximately $538 million at the time of withdrawal)

This represents:

· Approximately 9.6% of the total supply

· Approximately 25% of the free float (calculated based on the total supply minus the treasury, StablecoinX, and internally vested)

Some of the addressed wallets shown above are typically associated with Ethena buyback activities. More importantly, they are the only substantial and observable clusters I found that align in scale, timing, and footprint with the description in the public market reference in the disclosure document.

This does not imply that these transactions did not occur in public venues but rather that the interpretation of 'buyback' depends on whether they represent net market absorption or a withdrawal of supply previously positioned in these venues.

This is not a perfect attribution statement. On-chain attribution is inherently probabilistic. If there is additional context or a different interpretation supported by on-chain data, I am happy to include.

At this scale, execution cannot be stealthy.

References:

(1) StablecoinX Batch #1 Transaction 0x3339455dd775da5e18778577bdbb9dd20f96858295cb05c9d3ed0f630f6fb868

(2) StablecoinX Batch #2 Transaction 0xb22d5e79122aa6a3c6ed1bb4dbe0057a4802c0dc37eaf6dab38736cddca31b44

(3) StablecoinX Batch #3 Wallet 0x7462f0D93260909870487f17A27c336349579557

(4) PIPE #1 CB Prime Cluster Wallet #1 0xd54ce6a55312cbd708166d225bbdba95458177ab

(5) PIPE #1 CB Prime Cluster Wallet #2 0xa55457e0d0652ba47fe1f97873a62b4f9dcae4d1

(6) PIPE #1 CB Prime Cluster Wallet #3 0x72b272ccca76e0394352ff7819fb846855a164ad

(7) Ethena's CB Prime Deposit Wallet Address: 0xF2e2f6827AB893d636eb98F3Aac81E850880DA83

(8) Ethena Treasury Wallet 0xcfc40d4ECa21F60D329F1E6b9B3D6069EaA20BBC

(9) PIPE #1 Binance Execution Wallet: 0x9c7B3C57632aB8BED71a4dDbC950d8C009DFe7aA

(10) Wallet controlled by Ethena 0x8e771f7bAb34a3b4491e03F22f005483E5c375f5

(11) Wallet controlled by Ethena 0xB2af973905F05BC82bf97486b6aB883598D98298

(12) PIPE #2 Execution Wallet 0x631ee55b8ecd7afb53ec30211a082691a4cbe3ae

(13) PIPE #2 Coinbase Transaction 0x0563d67d3133d48ee5198fdd767adbcafa56e7f21e1b97bf8162322f4d75bab1

(14) PIPE #2 Treasury → CB Prime Outflow 0x5152627b344638435633a019236e89d5aa8b4dfeb2d3888d624c2094339aa520

(15) PIPE #2 CB Prime → Treasury Fund Outflow 0xd42b531494d2c4c8ed8c93cf8cac13812fb7cb7b6e07805e06eecb1d9dc99d63

(16) CB Prime → Coinbase Fund Outflow 0x0606edcf12e084271b6e2547d3ce2bc20300d84574bdc95740be9259d718fd35

(17) CB Prime <-> Coinbase Internal Routing Example 0xe6406faee21f3f236956195c586fab1592240adc698eabfb166644ae17f5e95d 0x9e73cf8043903e6fa2ccb7a8646c855f8c9d3f6a39995ba790fa1bcd1d181df9

Engaged in hundreds of small transactions through intermediary wallets and routers, e.g., 0x39FC29dcffC02A01E8133F9cc5e0aCF464A9000C

(18) CB Prime → Coinbase Internal Routing 0x1dd792b91ab98a122c73c86aae73af0d6641df96ddcde187724bf5860cf1d893

(19) Dedicated Bybit ENA Wallet 0x70167B76543C4a12b49B2f2B70CBf04D99345786

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