A large cryptocurrency investor, with the wallet address 0x540C, recently withdrew a massive $114.9 million in USDT from Aave's main market. This significant event immediately pushed Aave's USDT utilization rate to 92.83%, far exceeding its optimal level.
The sudden spike in the utilization rate has triggered Aave's built-in risk management mechanisms, causing borrowing costs to rise sharply. As explained in Aave's official documentation, once utilization surpasses the optimal threshold, a "Slope 2" mechanism activates to dramatically increase interest rates. This is designed to discourage further excessive borrowing, protect existing liquidity, and incentivize new USDT deposits to rebalance the market.
Industry experts view this as a clear demonstration of the potential volatility within decentralized finance (DeFi) markets. There has been no official comment from Aave's leadership regarding the incident.
As of now, Tether (USDT) remains pegged at $1.00, maintaining a strong market presence with a $183.37 billion market cap and a daily trading volume of $139.37 billion. Despite the massive withdrawal and interest rate changes on Aave, USDT's price stability has been largely unaffected, showing only minor fluctuations.
November 2025, Cryptoniteuae