Well, it eventually happened. The 22nd of February marks a crypto DeFi market crash. In fact, the crash itself has caused enough liquidations to rank it the second-highest liquidation event within the DeFi space’s history. Within just 24 hours, $24.1 million in loans were liquidated.
Compound Accounting For 60% Of Liquidations
DeBank, one of the many crypto data aggregators out there, revealed that the majority of these losses, $13.7 million, comes from Compound, constituting almost 60% of the entire market crash. The only one being close to those losses is Aave, which saw a relatively small loss of $5.4 million in liquidations.
The only other liquidation event larger than this one, and that’s by more than three times, occurred back on the 26th of November, 2020. That crash, in particular, was thanks to the DAI suddenly and spectacularly increasing in price, which caused a whopping $93 million worth of margin calls.
On Coinbase Pro alone, DAI recorded a whopping 30% increase. This, in turn, caused over $88 million in crypto loans to be liquidated within the protocol itself.
Every Factor Worsened The Event
Another important metric measured by DeBank was the total value locked (TVL) within the crypto space. According to the crypto aggregator, this saw a significant drop from $44.5 billion to $38.8 billion within just 24 hours, amounting to a decrease of 12.8%.
The only other time the DeFi markets managed to lose more in terms of percentage was back in January, when the DeFi market shed caused a decrease of 15.4% in TVL.
Another compounding factor comes from the Ethereum mainnet itself, primarily its staggering gas fees. Merchants are now reporting a total price tag of $30 just to enact a transaction of any kind. As one would imagine, that doesn’t really encourage small-scale operations.
Couple this with crypto traders being in a constant state of bidding war just to ensure that their transactions are pulled through, alongside tumbling token prices and massive network congestion, it’s easy to see why some traders couldn’t manage to close their positions in time.
Kraken In A Bit Of A Pickle
As is always the case in these matters, the ones most affected by this spectacular DeFi crash are the margin traders and DeFi users. Kraken, in particular, is having a rough time of it, as mass liquidations shot the price down to as little as $700 while it was trading at the $1,400 range on various other exchanges. Needless to say, more than a few customers have voiced their opinions that compensation must be given.
All those major corporations that invested so heavily into Bitcoin also saw multi-million USD worth of losses as they managed to buy at the peak just to see their assets tumble down in value. The 22nd of February saw $9,000 wiped out of a single Bitcoin’s value, reminding everyone just how insane the crypto market can be once you get too comfortable with it.
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