First Mover Americas: Ethena Labs’ New Token Rallies Overnight

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Ethena Labs’ ENA token, introduced on Tuesday, almost doubled in price overnight. Ethena Labs is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that offers the $1.3 billion yield-earning USDe (known as a “synthetic dollar”), and ENA is its new governance token. ENA is currently trading at around $0.93, up 49% in the past 24 hours. The token began trading on April 2 at around $0.60. A number of cryptocurrency exchanges have listed the token, including the world’s largest, Binance. The price rally pushed the token’s market value up to $1.3 billion, ranking it in 67th place among other projects in terms of market capitalization. The project has also received positive attention from former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes on X. Hayes said he sees the price going up to $10.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) steep rally has recently lost impetus. Still, the supply of stablecoins or dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies, often considered a powder keg that could be used to fund token purchases, continues to rise, a sign of reassuring stability to bitcoin bulls. Bitcoin hit record highs above $73,500 on March 14 and has since struggled to keep gains above $70,000, mainly due to the dwindling probability of a Fed rate cut in June. At press time, the leading cryptocurrency by market value was changing hands at $66,300, down 10% from its all-time high. Meantime, the cumulative supply of the top three stablecoins, tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), and DAI (DAI) – which dominate the stablecoin market with over 90% share – increased by 2.1% to $141.42 billion, the highest since May 2022. The cumulative supply is up over $20 billion this year.

The crypto-related venture capital (VC) firm Paradigm is looking to raise between $750 million and $850 million for a new fund, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg said if the deal is completed at the lower end of the range, it would still mark the industry’s biggest since the recent crypto winter. Paradigm, founded by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia partner Matt Huan, previously raised $2.5 billion for a fund during the height of the bull run in November 2021. The report comes as the crypto industry is enjoying a bull run that started after spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were given the green light by the SEC to trade in the U.S.

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows MacroMicro’s global recession probability based on various economic indicators such as consumption, employment, manufacturing, finance and raw materials.

• As of end-March, the probability of the global economy slipping into a recession was 34%. A consistent reading above 50% signals an impending recession, as in 2000 and 2008.

• The low probability of a recession means the Federal Reserve and other major central banks may be less aggressive in cutting interest rates.

• Source: MacroMicro

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