CRV Sitting on Exchanges Reaches an All-Time High as CRV Price Hits All-Time Low

The founder of Curve, the decentralized exchange primarily for stablecoins, was liquidated as a result of CRV dropping over 20% in the past 24 hours.

The amount of CRV tokens sitting on exchanges has reached an all-time high, on the same day the cryptocurrency’s price has plummeted to an all-time low. 

According to blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant, exchanges are holding 613 million CRV tokens worth over $177 million. That 76% increase from the prior day, when the figure sat at 347.5 million, is likely a sign traders are offloading CRV from their holdings. 

While CryptoQuant’s data shows that exchanges hold roughly 50% of CRV’s circulating supply, data from on-chain intelligence firm Nansen calculates that 72% of the CRV’s circulating supply is held on exchanges. 

In the past 24 hours, The amount of CRV on Binance increased by $64 million, while OKX, Bybit, and Bithumb saw their CRV exchange reserves jump by almost $11.7 million, per Nansen. Exchange reserves are the total number of tokens held on a given exchange, and generally consist of customer deposits.. 

The price of CRV sank 22% in the same period to 23.9 cents, its lowest level since the token started trading in Aug. 2020. At the time of writing, the price has settled at around 29 cents, per CoinGecko. 

Curve Founder Gets Liquidated

This price decline for CRV – the cryptocurrency that powers the incentive structure and governance system of the decentralized stablecoin exchange Curve – has resulted in forced liquidations of Curve’s founder Michael Egorov. 

“Michael Egorov was liquidated for $140 million in CRV,” wrote crypto data firm Arkham Intelligence on X. “The price of CRV fell through Egorov’s liquidation threshold this morning, with his entire 9-figure lending position liquidated across 5 protocols.” 

“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. [The] size of my positions was too large for markets to handle and caused 10M of bad debt” said Egorov on Thursday over X. “I have already repaid 93%, and I intend to repay the rest very shortly. It will help users not to suffer from this situation.” 

Despite getting liquidated, Egorov “did not seem to lose anything, as he had already cashed out and bought a mansion in 2023,” wrote Lookonchain on X. “The losers are $CRV holders and investors who bought $CRV at $0.4 via OTC in August 2023.” 

Last year, Egorov faced a similar risk of liquidation when the price of CRV dropped following an exploit that impacted Curve’s smart contracts at the end of July 2023. Egorov was able to avoid liquidation at the time because he raised about $42 million through over-the-counter sales of CRV tokens. Wintermute, DWF Labs, Gnosis Chain, and Reserve Protocol were among the large buyers of CRV tokens that participated in these OTC deals.