DeFi & NFT

Story: Whales Dump $6 Million in AAVE as KelpDAO Hack Sends Token Crashing 20%

By Maheen Hernandez

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Big Wallets Bail Fast. Right now AAVE sits at $91.89, down 20.44% in a day. That's the lowest it's been since April 13.

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ETH Exodus Breaks the System. The AAVE selloff was only part of it. A massive wave of ETH withdrawals hit the protocol at the…

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Team Scrambles to Contain Damage. Aave told BeInCrypto that the impact is contained to the V3 ETH market.

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Aave's token got crushed on April 19. AAVE dropped more than 20% after a KelpDAO exploit triggered panic selling among big holders and pushed the protocol's ETH pool to the…

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The price fell hard and fast. AAVE went from around $115 down to under $92 as whales bailed out.

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One wallet called smaugvision sold 20,015 AAVE for 2.06 million USDC. That worked out to about $103 per token. Another address, 0xFC56, offloaded 20,000 AAVE for 2.

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Do the math. These three wallets alone dumped nearly 60,000 AAVE tokens worth over $6 million total. And that's just what got tracked publicly.

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The timing wasn't random. These holders clearly saw the KelpDAO news and decided to get out before things got worse. Can't really blame them, but it made everything spiral faster.

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The AAVE selloff was only part of it. A massive wave of ETH withdrawals hit the protocol at the same time. Reports say over $5.4 billion in ETH left Aave within hours.

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Justin Sun pulled out 65,584 ETH. That's roughly $154 million from the Tron founder alone. He wasn't the only one rushing for the exits, but his withdrawal definitely contributed…

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The withdrawals pushed Aave's ETH utilization rate all the way to 100%. Zero liquidity left. If you had ETH sitting in Aave's V3 pool, you couldn't get it out.

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When utilization hits 100%, borrowing rates shoot up fast. Aave's interest rate curve is designed to respond to high utilization by making it expensive to borrow. Really expensive.

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Depositors got stuck. They couldn't access their assets, and the sudden spike in rates created panic among users who were already worried about the exploit.

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Bad debt emerged from the KelpDAO incident too. The exploit created losses that the protocol now has to deal with, adding more pressure to an already messy situation.

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More context: Solana Futures Open Interest Jumps 20% as Traders Eye $100 Price Target

The Currency Analytics

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