Franklin's crypto chief swaps the asset manager bench for Ethena's biggest cheerleader seat 🏛️

StablecoinX has named Christopher Jensen, a former portfolio manager and director of digital asset research at Franklin Templeton, as its new chief executive officer. Jensen takes over from Ted Chen, who led StablecoinX through its public listing in June and will continue to serve as chairman of the company's board. StablecoinX trades on Nasdaq under the ticker USDE and describes itself as 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, grants holders voting rights over changes to the protocol. StablecoinX holds about 3.03 billion ENA tokens, roughly 20% of the token's total supply, making it what the company calls ENA's largest corporate holder.

Jensen spent more than six years at Franklin Templeton after joining the firm in 2018 to help build its digital asset group. Franklin Templeton's blockchain venture fund participated in Ethena's seed round, giving Jensen exposure to the protocol from its early stages. His 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 is down roughly 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.