On Thursday, 5 November, the ENA token unlock calendar showed 93.8 million ENA, worth about $15.3 million, unlocking from the core contributors allocation, and the price of ENA fell about 11% to $0.1604 on Binance. That is the lowest daily low since 18 September.

CoinGecko page for Ethena showing a price near $0.161, down 11.5% in 24 hours, rank 44
Source: CoinGecko, Ethena (ENA) overview and 24-hour chart.

We last covered Ethena in August, in a report on its investor buyout. The unlock figures now come from Tokenomist, which tracks release schedules. It records the 93.8 million ENA unlock as coming from the Core Contributors allocation on 5 November, after a 40.6 million ENA release from the Foundation allocation on 2 November. Tokenomist does not say whether any of those tokens were sold.

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Tokenomist summary of Ethena unlocks: 40.6 million ENA on 2 November, 93.8 million ENA on 5 November, next unlock 2 December
Source: Tokenomist, Ethena insight summary. The next scheduled release is 40.6 million ENA, about $6.6 million, on 2 December.

Did the ENA token unlock push the price lower?

The price says no. ENA stayed within about 1.5% of its midnight level for the first 13 hours of the day, long after the tokens were unlocked. The drop came between 14:00 and 16:00 UTC, the same two hours in which Bitcoin fell from $79,662 to $76,030, as we reported in our Bitcoin chip selloff piece.

Line chart of ENA and BTC percent change on 5 November, flat until 13:00 UTC and then both falling, ENA about 10.7% and BTC about 5.5%
Source: Binance spot hourly closes, 5 November, as a percent change from the 00:00 UTC open. ENA ends near minus 10.7%, Bitcoin near minus 5.5%.

ENA fell about twice as far as Bitcoin. That fits its habit. Over the last 30 daily closes on Binance, ENA has moved in the same direction as Bitcoin with a correlation of 0.77, and for each 1% Bitcoin moved, ENA moved about 2.6%. The ENA token unlock itself was small. It equals roughly 0.7% of the 13.5 billion ENA in circulation and about 4.5% of the $341.9 million that traded in 24 hours, per CoinGecko.

The earlier damage came a week ago. ENA fell 16.3% on 29 October, the day of the Binance exploit we covered in our Binance hack report. On 30 October the analytics account Lookonchain reported that the Binance hacker had finished selling 217.5 million ENA for $33.93 million. That figure is Lookonchain’s own count.

Lookonchain post on X: after the Binance hacker finished dumping all 217.5M ENA ($33.93M), someone started going long on ENA
Source: Lookonchain on X, post of 30 October.

What traders are doing now

Futures traders did not pile in. Funding on Binance’s ENAUSDT perpetual stayed at 0.005%, the baseline rate, on every 4-hour reading since 3 November. By 17:00 UTC open interest had gone from $95.8 million to $83.3 million. That is 13% fewer open contracts, so traders were closing out, not adding bets.

ENAUSDT perpetual open interest on Binance Futures over three days, falling sharply on 5 November
Source: Binance Futures open interest history, hourly, for the ENAUSDT perpetual.

ENA broke under $0.1667 to $0.1680, the zone where it had bounced on 2, 3 and 4 November. If it keeps falling, the next price on the chart is $0.1526, the 18 September daily low.

ENA hourly chart from 30 October to 5 November with lost support at 0.1667 to 0.1680, the 5 November low at 0.1598 and the 18 September low at 0.1526
Source: Binance ENA/USDT hourly candles, 30 October to 5 November, UTC. The orange band marks the lost support, the red line the 5 November low and the blue line the 18 September daily low.

The line to watch is $0.1680. A daily close back above it would show Thursday’s fall was a market-wide flush and cancel the bearish read.