Ethena's USDtb Stablecoin Debuts with $65M TVL on Day One, Sparking Optimism

Ethena's USDtb had a total value of more than $65 million locked in on the first day.

Athena Labs, a decentralized finance business, launched its new BlackRock BUIDL Fund-backed stablecoin, USDtb, on December 16, with $65.4 million in total value locked in on the first day.

Ethena's new USDtb stablecoin functions similarly to Tether USDT.

USD Coin (USDC) has a ticker price of $1.00 and is backed by cash or cash equivalents in a 1:1 ratio. It may assist holders of Ethena's flagship product, USDe, "weather difficult market conditions."

"Ethena will be able to close the hedging positions underlying USDe and reallocate its backing assets to USDtb to mitigate related risks further," Ethena Labs announced on December 16.

José Maria Macedo, one of the founders of blockchain research and development business Delphi Labs, praised USDtb and anticipated that it would become the largest tokenized treasury product within a month of introduction.

Seraphim Czecker, Ethena's head of growth, stated that USDtb can potentially expand to $100 billion since the company can now efficiently deploy capital in bearish circumstances by "creating an APY 'floor' around the T-Bill rate."

The stablecoin is 90% backed by BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, which has partnered with blockchain tokenization firm Securitize.

In October, the "core" of USDtb's smart contracts passed three comprehensive audits by Pashov, Quantstamp, and Cyfrin, yielding no high or medium-level discoveries.

USDtb received approval from Ethena's risk committee in late September, but specifics were not completed until earlier this month.

Cointelegraph contacted Ethena Labs for comment but received no answer by the time of publication.