The roller coaster ride of the crypto market took another sharp turn over the weekend, nearly putting Michael Egorov, founder of the DeFi protocol Curve (CRV), on the edge of financial oblivion.

Egorov, known for taking on massive leveraged positions, found himself staring down the barrel of liquidation as Bitcoin prices plummeted 10% and CRV suffered a brutal 30% drop – nosediving from $0.58 to a chilling $0.38. This brushed dangerously close to Egorov's liquidation point of $0.37.

The culprit? A gargantuan DeFi loan. Egorov reportedly mortgaged a staggering 371 million CRV tokens (roughly $156 million) across five different addresses on six lending platforms to borrow a cool $92.5 million in stablecoins. To avoid getting liquidated, he would have had to either pump more CRV into his collateral pool or cough up some of the borrowed funds.

This isn't Egorov's first dance with the liquidation devil. In October, faced with a similar predicament, he had to call upon crypto heavyweights like Tron founder Justin Sun to bail him out through a series of over-the-counter (OTC) deals. These deals, crucial for whales like Egorov, allow them to offload large quantities of crypto without significantly impacting the market price. In this instance, Egorov managed to raise a hefty $15.8 million by selling 39.2 million CRV tokens.

The importance of protecting his loan goes beyond personal financial security. A forced liquidation of Egorov's CRV holdings would have likely triggered a domino effect, sending the token price plummeting even further due to the limited trading volume – a mere $85 million in the past 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap.

Egorov wasn't the only one feeling the heat. The broader crypto market witnessed a brutal liquidation event, with Coinglass reporting over $1.5 billion in losses between April 13th and 14th alone. DeFi loans were no exception, experiencing a collective $120 million liquidation bloodbath.

This episode serves as a stark reminder of the inherent volatility and high risks associated with leveraged DeFi positions. While potentially lucrative, they can also lead to spectacular wipeouts as Egorov narrowly discovered this weekend.