Ethena, the developer of the USDe stablecoin, has secured a $100 million fund for a new token targeting mainstream financial institutions. Investors including Franklin Templeton and Fidelity Investments’ F-Prime Capital participated in the funding round. According to Bloomberg, the round was completed in December, with Franklin Templeton and Fidelity Investments’ F-Prime Capital among the investors.

Founder of Ethena, Guy Young, announced in a blog post in January the company’s plan to launch a new stablecoin called iUSDe specifically tailored for regulated financial institutions. The existing stablecoin, USDe, uses stablecoins as collateral instead of traditional 1:1 fiat-backed assets and maintains price stability by taking large open interest in derivative positions.

USDe quickly increased its market value to approximately $6 billion this month. Thus, it positioned itself as the third-largest stablecoin after Tether’s USDT, with a total market value of $142 billion, and Circle’s USDC, with a $57 billion market value.

Some analysts in the crypto market consider USDe a safe haven during potential market fluctuations. Arthur Hayes, the chief investment officer at Maelstrom, noted that the digital asset fund’s investment in USDe reached “record levels.” Hayes mentioned that they aim to provide liquidity to buy in price drops in Bitcoin by holding USDe.