Franklin Templeton digital asset veteran takes helm at StablecoinX

StablecoinX appointed former Franklin Templeton digital asset executive Christopher Jensen as CEO, putting him in charge of the largest corporate holder of Ethena’s ENA token.

Jensen succeeds Ted Chen, who led StablecoinX through its public listing in June and will remain chairman of the company’s board.

StablecoinX, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker USDE, is a publicly listed company focused on the Ethena ecosystem. Ethena issues USDe, a synthetic dollar that ranks as the fifth-largest stablecoin with nearly $4.4 billion in circulation, according to DefiLlama data. ENA, Ethena’s governance token, gives holders voting rights over changes to the protocol.

StablecoinX holds about 3.03 billion ENA tokens, roughly 20% of the token’s total supply, which the company says makes it ENA’s largest corporate holder.

Before joining StablecoinX, Jensen was a portfolio manager and director of digital asset research at Franklin Templeton, where he helped build the firm’s digital asset group after its launch in 2018. The asset manager’s blockchain venture fund participated in Ethena’s seed round, giving Jensen exposure to the protocol from its early stages.

The appointment comes about a week after Ethena launched Ethena Pay, a self-custodial app that lets users spend, save and transfer its USDe synthetic dollar.

The ENA token remains down about 20% year to date but has rebounded sharply in recent weeks, gaining more than 80% over the past month to trade around $0.16, according to CoinGecko.

ENA token price over the past month. Source: CoinGecko