Curve Founder Faces Massive Blow As CRV Price Dives 40%, Multi-Million Dollar Liquidations

A sudden and dramatic crash in the value of Curve Finance’s native token, CRV, has resulted in substantial losses for bullish investors and the platform’s founder, Michael Egorov. Blockchain analysis platform Arkham reported that Egorov faced liquidations totaling $140 million in CRV.

In a social media post on X (formerly Twitter), Arkham confirmed that Egorov’s lending position worth nine figures was liquidated across five protocols due to the price of CRV dropping below his liquidation threshold. 

Egorov’s accounts incurred over a million dollars of bad debt on Curve’s Llamalend, which he managed to clear by receiving $6 million USDT. Additionally, Egorov experienced a $5 million liquidation on UwU Lend while making repayments on Inverse to mitigate further losses.

On June 13, Curve contributor Saint Rat revealed that the protocol had incurred $11.5 million in bad debt, which could be resolved if the price of CRV rises to $0.33. Egorov expressed his commitment to working with the Curve Finance team to address the bad debt situation and protect users from its impact.

In response to the crisis, Egorov proposed burning 10% of the total CRV supply to stabilize the token’s price. He also announced that active voters would receive a three-month boost on deposit rewards across all Curve platforms, aiming to incentivize participation and strengthen the ecosystem. Egorov also stated:

The Curve Finance team and I have been working to solve the liquidation risk issue which happened today. Many of you are aware that I had all my loans liquidated. Size of my positions was too large for markets to handle and caused 10M of bad debt. Only CRV market on lend.curve.fi (where the position was the biggest) was affected. I have already repaid 93%, and I intend to repay the rest very shortly. It will help users not to suffer from this situation.

Interestingly, this recent episode is not the first time Egorov has faced significant liquidations. Last year, he borrowed $60 million worth of loans from Aave, which posed a risk of bad debt in the event of liquidation. 

To address this, Gauntlet, a risk management firm, recommended freezing Aave’s v2 CRV market to minimize protocol risks. In a subsequent private deal, Egorov sold 106 million CRV for $46 million to repay most of his debts on Aave and other lending platforms, ultimately settling his debt to Aave with an $11 million USDT deposit in September.

Before the market crash, CRV was trading at $0.3582. However, it plummeted nearly 40%, hitting an all-time low of $0.2220. 

Since then, the token has recovered and is currently trading at $0.2880. This recovery has helped to mitigate the losses incurred within the 24-hour timeframe, reducing them to 22%.

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com