Curve Founder Still Owes $80 Million Despite Raising Nearly $30 Million in the Past Two Days
Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov has almost paid off his $80,000,000 debt through a new round of over-the-counter sales of Curve token (CRV).
According to Twitter user EmberCN, Wintermute Trading bought 25,000,000 CRV tokens in two separate transactions for $10 million.
Wintermute bought the tokens at a price of 40 cents each in an OTC deal. They trade for 58 cents on the open markets, according to data from AskFX.
Reserve Protocol and Gnosis Chain are also current buyers of CRV tokens.
Data from blockchain analytics firm DeBank shows that the money was used to repay some, but not all, of his loans at Aave Abracadabra FraxLend Inverse Finance.
Egorov and others fear contagion should CRV’s price reach $0.368. Gauntlet, the DeFi risk management firm, said on forums that Aave’s CRV collateral was being sold in a low-liquidity market. This step is considered risky.
Nick Ruck told AskFX that while some claim Curve’s OTC transactions decentralize the token, the majority of traders are institutional firms or whales. It’s not a bad thing, but it does enable risky behavior. Protocol founders can count on the industry to protect them from contagion from irresponsible lending.
Indices reports that CRV’s price has remained stable at 58 cents over the past 24 hours, after falling more than 20% a few days ago since its first exploit.
UPDATE (4-Aug-04 04:34 UTC). Update headline and story to reflect latest numbers.