The weekend's crypto crash sent shivers down the spines of many investors, and Michael Egorov, founder of the DeFi protocol Curve (CRV), was no exception. His colossal DeFi loan, a leveraged gamble that nearly backfired spectacularly, once again teetered on the brink of liquidation.

Bitcoin took a 10% tumble since Saturday, but altcoins like CRV fared far worse, plummeting 30% from $0.58 to a precarious $0.43. At its absolute nadir, CRV dipped to a chilling $0.38, a hair's breadth away from Egorov's liquidation point of $0.37.

The situation was dire. As EmberCN tweeted (translated from Chinese), "the lending health rate of multiple positions has dropped to around 1.1." In simpler terms, Egorov's borrowed funds were inching closer to being called in if the CRV price continued its downward spiral.

A closer look reveals the magnitude of Egorov's leveraged play. He had mortgaged a staggering 371 million CRV tokens (roughly $156 million) across five different addresses on six lending platforms to secure a $92.5 million stablecoin loan. This high-risk, high-reward strategy left him exposed – a further 10% drop in CRV's price, combined with no additional collateral or debt repayment, would have triggered a devastating liquidation.

This isn't Egorov's first brush with liquidation rodeo. In the past, he's had to call upon crypto heavyweights like Tron founder Justin Sun for emergency cash infusions to save his leveraged position. Back in October, Sun purchased 5 million CRV tokens from Egorov at $0.40 apiece, along with a series of other private deals that raised $15.8 million but came at the cost of offloading 39.2 million CRV.

The urgency to maintain his loan position is understandable. CRV boasts a relatively thin trading volume (only $85 million in the past 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap) and a market cap just above $500 million. A forced liquidation of Egorov's massive CRV holdings would likely trigger a freefall in the token's price, impacting not just him but the entire CRV ecosystem.

Egorov wasn't alone in this weekend's carnage. Data from Coinglass paints a grim picture – crypto traders lost a staggering $1.5 billion in liquidations between April 13th and 14th alone. Even short sellers hoping to profit from the market crash got burned, losing $273 million during the volatile swings. DeFi loans weren't spared either, with Wu reporting $120 million in decentralized exchange liquidations during the same period.

As the crypto market recovers from this weekend's bloodbath, one thing is certain: Egorov has dodged a bullet. But the question remains – how long can he keep this leveraged dance going before the music stops?