Despite urgent efforts to maintain the position, the risk of liquidation has not completely disappeared if ETH continues to fluctuate near the whale’s liquidation price.

ETH whale “narrowly” avoided a $75 million liquidation on Maker. Source: CoinGape

A Narrow Escape

A crypto whale was on the verge of liquidation for an eight-figure loan on Maker amid extreme market turbulence.

Initially, the whale had a $75 million DAI loan, collateralized with 65,675 ETH at a collateralization ratio of 176%, with a liquidation price of approximately $1,932.08. Facing potential liquidation, they injected over $4 million in ETH from Bitfinex, lowering the liquidation price to $1,874.98 and raising the collateralization ratio to 181.95%.

The whale then took further steps to secure their position:

• Withdrew over $1.5 million USDT from Binance.
• Swapped USDT for DAI on Uniswap.
• Paid off part of the debt, bringing the liquidation price down to $1,781.28.

After these liquidity injections, the whale’s loan value was reduced from $75 million to $67.89 million.

Despite these efforts, the whale is not completely out of danger. If ETH continues to drop sharply, they will need to inject more collateral or repay more debt to avoid liquidation. ETH is currently trading around $1,861, down nearly 10% in the past 24 hours, just 4.3% away from the whale’s liquidation price!

Ethereum price movements in the last 24 hours, screenshot from CoinGecko at 09:35 AM on March 11, 2025

Additionally, the whale narrowly avoided a $16 million penalty fee due to liquidation by promptly adding 2,000 ETH to their vault just before their position was closed.

On-chain data shows that this whale is a long-time Maker user, having borrowed from the platform since 2021. Maker is a decentralized lending platform that allows users to borrow DAI by over-collateralizing other assets.

Chronicle Labs, the oracle developer for Maker, stated that their system updates prices every hour using the previous hour’s average price. This setup provides pre-liquidation warnings, giving users more time to add collateral or repay debts to protect their positions.

Macro Downturn Drags Crypto Market Lower

This event comes amid intense pressure across the entire financial market. Analysts are predicting a major correction in the stock and risk asset markets after President Trump announced the continuation of tariff policies, raising concerns about a U.S. economic recession.

Bitcoin has once again fallen below the $80,000 mark, while ETH has, for the first time in months, lost its grip on the $2,000 level, triggering a wave of liquidations across DeFi platforms.

According to Coinglass data, total liquidations in the derivatives market over the past 24 hours have exceeded $930 million, continuing a streak of daily liquidations surpassing $500 million since late February 2025, with long positions accounting for 80%.

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