In South Korea, stablecoins and related tokens have been growing in demand very quickly. In June, Circle’s stock, known as CRCL, was the most traded foreign stock by Korean investors. At the same time, the native token of Ethena Labs, called ENA, saw a big increase in buying in the region .
As noted by the research analyst at Four Pillars, a Seoul-based web3 research and development firm, Korean investors bought about $443 million worth of Circle (CRCL) shares after it went live in June.
Market watchers believe that the primary reason behind this frenzy is the recently passed GENIUS Act in the U.S. and increasing demand of stablecoins for DeFi trading, cross-border transactions, and the evolving fintech landscape.
ENA and USDe’s Surging Demand in Korea
As stablecoin issuers are not paying interest to users under new rules under the GENIUS Act, they are looking for newer ways to earn yield on their stablecoins. This ban on yield payments is causing a major shift in the crypto market with stablecoins like USDe gaining traction.
Ethena’s USDe stablecoin has swiftly surged to $10 billion in market cap with this latest demand. A prominent crypto trader Cas Abbé pointed out in a X post that the “reason behind this growth is GENIUS Act approval, which prohibits issuers from providing yields on stablecoins.”
As per CoinMarketCap data, USDe is now the third largest stablecoin by market cap with it reaching 10 billion in total supply faster than any other stablecoin. In the last 1 month, USDe made up 26% of all new stablecoin supply.
Ethena, the DeFi protocol behind USDe stablecoin, also started a program called Stablecoin X. It raised over $360 million, with 260 million planned for buying back ENA tokens. This buyback equals around 6.7% of all ENA tokens.
This move has brought a strong bullish move to the ENA token price as it rose about over 140% in the last month as per market data. Now trading around $0.81 per token, ENA’s market cap has exceeded $5.4 billion.
Also Read: Arthur Hayes Adds $7.45M in ETH, Boosts DeFi Tokens Holdings
