Share
Share this article
Copy linkX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmail
Finance
Share
Share this article
Copy linkX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmail
Most Influential: Guy Young
Young sparked
Finance
Share
Share this article
Copy linkX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmail
Most Influential: Guy Young
Young sparked
Most Influential: Guy Young
Most Influential: Guy Young
Young sparked a new category of digital assets, yieldcoins, that sits at the intersection of DeFi rails and TradFi basis trades.
By Krisztian Sandor|Edited by Cheyenne Ligon
Updated Dec 16, 2025, 3:06 p.m. Published Dec 16, 2025, 3:00 p.m.
In a cycle obsessed with memecoins and dog tokens, Ethena Labs founder and CEO Guy Young built one of the biggest and most systemically important pieces of crypto plumbing.
This feature is a part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 list.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
Sign me up
In just two years, Young scaled Ethena from an idea — admittedly taking inspiration from BitMEX co-founder and crypto guru Arthur Hayes — into a $15 billion protocol by expanding aggressively, cutting distribution partnerships across exchanges and onchain venues, pushing its synthetic dollar USDe and yield-bearing sUSDe into every corner of the market. The result was a new category of digital tokens, or yieldcoins, that lives at the intersection of DeFi rails and TradFi basis trades.
Nick Van Eck, founder of stablecoin protocol AUSD, argued recently that Ethena effectively kicked off a new era of crypto-native asset management, with yield being the main product. Ethena brought yield fully onchain, opening up a popular hedge fund trade — the ETH/BTC basis trade — to anyone with a wallet, wrapped in a simple $1-denominated instrument. If Van Eck is right, this could be a $500 billion to $1 trillion business line over the next decade-plus.
Then, Young took Ethena one step further, entering the booming stablecoin issuance business and taking up the gloves against giants like Stripe and Circle. Ethena is helping crypto projects like MegaETH, Sui and Solana-based Jupiter spin up their own digital dollar tokens on top of Ethena’s infrastructure, as stablecoins continue to break into the mainstream as one of the biggest use cases for blockchains.
EthenaStablecoinYieldCoinDesk Most Influential 2025
More For You
Protocol Research: GoPlus Security
Commissioned byGoPlus
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
View Full Report
More For You
Most Influential: Peter Schiff
Peter Schiff, the outspoken gold advocate and notorious bitcoin critic, has been vindicated by the market’s performance, cementing his stance after years of skepticism towards digital assets.
Read full story
Latest Crypto News
CoreWeave collapse sparks fears of cracks in AI infrastructure boom
Brazil to test blockchain in state real estate auction to reduce fraud, disputes
Most Influential: Peter Schiff
Most Influential: Jerome Powell
Most Influential: Oleg Ogienko
Most Influential: Tyler Williams
Top Stories
U.S. added 64,000 jobs in November, with unemployment rate jumping to four-year high of 4.6%
Bulls beware — BofA Fund Manager Survey flashing contrarian sell signal
KindlyMD faces Nasdaq delisting risk after failing to meet minimum share price levels
U.S. bitcoin, ether ETFs saw largest outflows in a month as prices tumbled Monday
Bitcoin slump deepens as most of top 100 tokens fall below key trading signals
Visa brings Circle's USDC settlement to U.S. banks following $3.5 billion stablecoin pilot
Sorumluluk Reddi: Bu sitede yeniden yayınlanan makaleler, halka açık platformlardan alınmıştır ve yalnızca bilgilendirme amaçlıdır. MEXC'nin görüşlerini yansıtmayabilir. Tüm hakları telif sahiplerine aittir. Herhangi bir içeriğin üçüncü taraf haklarını ihlal ettiğini düşünüyorsanız, kaldırılması için lütfen service@support.mexc.com ile iletişime geçin. MEXC, içeriğin doğruluğu, eksiksizliği veya güncelliği konusunda hiçbir garanti vermez ve sağlanan bilgilere dayalı olarak alınan herhangi bir eylemden sorumlu değildir. İçerik, finansal, yasal veya diğer profesyonel tavsiye niteliğinde değildir ve MEXC tarafından bir tavsiye veya onay olarak değerlendirilmemelidir.
Ayrıca Şunları da Beğenebilirsiniz
MMDA, sleep health organization launch drowsy driving campaign ahead of holidays
The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and the Philippine Society of Sleep Medicine (PSSM) on Wednesday launch an awareness campaign to prevent drowsy driving
Paylaş
Bworldonline2025/12/18 12:05
A Netflix ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Short Film Has Been Rated For Release
The post A Netflix ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Short Film Has Been Rated For Release appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. KPop Demon Hunters Netflix Everyone has wondered what may be the next step for KPop Demon Hunters as an IP, given its record-breaking success on Netflix. Now, the answer may be something exactly no one predicted. According to a new filing with the MPA, something called Debut: A KPop Demon Hunters Story has been rated PG by the ratings body. It’s listed alongside some other films, and this is obviously something that has not been publicly announced. A short film could be well, very short, a few minutes, and likely no more than ten. Even that might be pushing it. Using say, Pixar shorts as a reference, most are between 4 and 8 minutes. The original movie is an hour and 36 minutes. The “Debut” in the title indicates some sort of flashback, perhaps to when HUNTR/X first arrived on the scene before they blew up. Previously, director Maggie Kang has commented about how there were more backstory components that were supposed to be in the film that were cut, but hinted those could be explored in a sequel. But perhaps some may be put into a short here. I very much doubt those scenes were fully produced and simply cut, but perhaps they were finished up for this short film here. When would Debut: KPop Demon Hunters theoretically arrive? I’m not sure the other films on the list are much help. Dead of Winter is out in less than two weeks. Mother Mary does not have a release date. Ne Zha 2 came out earlier this year. I’ve only seen news stories saying The Perfect Gamble was supposed to come out in Q1 2025, but I’ve seen no evidence that it actually has. KPop Demon Hunters Netflix It could be sooner rather than later as Netflix looks to capitalize…
Paylaş
BitcoinEthereumNews2025/09/18 02:23
MREIT to acquire P16.22-B office towers in Taguig City via share swap
MREIT, Inc., the real estate investment trust (REIT) arm of listed Megaworld Corp., is set to acquire P16.22 billion worth of nine Grade A office buildings through
Paylaş
Bworldonline2025/12/18 11:10