A “desperate” cryptocurrency investor has paid well over $2 million in an on-chain trade to swap out of an investment offering them exposure to $USDC and the decentralized stablecoin $DAI and into $USDT, but only received $0.05 in return.
According to an analyst’s take on the trade and a postmortem report from the decentralized exchange aggregator used, KyberSwap, the “desperate” trader held $2 million worth of liquidity provider tokens on Curve’s 3CRv, which offers exposure to $DAI, $USDC, and $USDT and allows holders to earn from trading fees.
The trader, who moved to exchange the funds into $USDT amid a $42 billion bank run in traditional finance that compromised the backing of USDC before US regulators moved in at Silicon Valley Bank, seemingly wanted to trade the liquidity provider tokens instead of just withdrawing from the liquidity pool for 6% slippage, which led to the poor trade.
The trader, according to reports, neglected to set slippage correctly. Slippage, as Coinbase describes it, refers to the difference “between the expected price of an order and the price when the order actually executes.”
KyberSwap’s aggregator ended up routing the investor’s trade through 0x’s route as it was the only one that successfully estimated the gas fee necessary for the transactions to be complete. As a result, the trade was made using a liquidity pool on Uniswap V2 with just $2 in liquidity, which had been idle for 251 days.
As the $2 million trade was made against a liquidity pool with $2 of liquidity in it and no slippage was set, the traders saw a return of just $0.05 in USDT, leaving the pool off-balance. A blockchain bot detected the imbalance and quickly moved in, to allow for an exchange of $2 million for an additional $.145.
The bot paid over $39,000 to make the trade, but it ended up netting over $2.04 million in profit through it, while the user made its disastrous trade.
KyberSwap has said it is currently in touch with the affected user, while also contacting the creator of the bot, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and “other parties to assist with funds recovery.” The platform urged users to “do a final check on the swap rates displayed before signing the final transaction.”
The trader was likely desperate as over the weekend both USDC and DAI lost their peg to the U.S. dollar, after it was revealed the former had part of its reserves at Silicon Valley Bank. DAI is partly backed by USDC, among other digital currencies.
The peg has now nearly been restored after US regulators announced measures to safeguard all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank after their recent closures.
Regulators in the US have ensured full protection for depositors at Silicon Valley Bank after it was closed last week and placed under the control of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
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