Ethena Agrees With Regulator to Withdraw From German Market

All existing users will be onboarded to Ethena's entity in the British Virgin Islands.

Updated Apr 15, 2025, 2:11 p.m. Published Apr 15, 2025, 2:04 p.m.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ethena has agreed to wind down its operations in Germany.

The decision comes three weeks after BaFin, Germany's finance regulator, identified "serious deficiencies" in Ethena's USDe token and said that the company was offering securities in Germany without approval.

"We have agreed with BaFin to wind down all activities of Ethena GMBH and will no longer be pursuing the MiCAR authorization in Germany," Ethena said in a tweet.

It added that all previous users will be onboarded to Ethena BVI, the protocol's entity in the British Virgin Islands.

Ethena is the yield-generating protocol with $4.9 billion in total value locked (TVL). The USDe token is dubbed a "synthetic dollar" and is backed by bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies.

Ethena's ENA token is down by 2.88% in the past 24 hours, underperforming against the wider market which is up 1.17%, according to CoinMarketCap.

Oliver Knight

Oliver Knight is the co-leader of CoinDesk data tokens and data team. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022 Oliver spent three years as the chief reporter at Coin Rivet. He first started investing in bitcoin in 2013 and spent a period of his career working at a market making firm in the UK. He does not currently have any crypto holdings.