Ethena Labs is preparing to debut its nearly $1.5 billion USDtb stablecoin in the U.S., less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a regulatory framework into law for stablecoins that is expected to grow consumer demand for the tokens.
The synthetic-dollar protocol is partnering with Anchorage Digital, a cryptocurrency bank, to issue USDtb in the U.S. It will use Anchorage Digital’s stablecoin issuance platform—a turnkey solution for institutions that creates and distributes digital dollars in compliance with local regulations.
The official start date for the token’s issuance stateside is not yet clear. An Anchorage representative told Decrypt USDtb will debut in the U.S. in the “near future,” but did not specify a date.
“While we’ve already seen strong demand for USDtb, [and] we expect GENIUS compliance to empower our partners and holders to confidently and significantly expand its use across new products and platforms,” Ethena Labs CEO Guy Young said Thursday in a statement, referring to the new regulatory framework for stablecoins
The dollar-pegged token’s planned rollout in the U.S. comes after President Trump signed into law a stablecoin bill called the GENIUS Act on July 18. The legislation is expected to fuel a massive expansion of the stablecoin market, which is worth more than $250 billion as of the time of writing, according to DeFiLlama data. U.K. bank Standard Chartered recently forecast that the market could triple in size by the end of 2026.
As more money flows into stablecoins, crypto-native firms and traditional finance institutions are jockeying for a place in the market. Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Western Union have all signaled their interest in introducing stablecoins over the past few weeks. .
Meanwhile, digital asset-focused firms such as crypto custodian BitGo and Trump-affiliated decentralized finance platform World Liberty Financial have rolled out stablecoins within the past year, with predictions market Polymarket rumored to be joining the fray.
USDtb’s circulating supply now stands at more than $1.45 billion, according to data provider CoinMarketCap.
ENA, the token of the Ethena network, was recently up more than 5% over the past 24 hours, according to crypto markets data provider CoinGecko. It has climbed about 75% over the past month.
Tether is the top stablecoin issuer with daily trading volume of $152.6 billion as of writing time, according to data provider CoinMarketCap. U.S.-based Circle trails the USDT-issuer with $17.4 billion in daily trading volume, the same data shows.