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Aave’s USDT lending market experienced a sudden spike in interest rates, driven by activity from a small group of closely connected wallets, raising concerns about liquidity concentration and the fragility of decentralized finance (DeFi) systems.
USDT Borrowing Rate on Aave
On July 16 and 17, Aave’s USDT supply APY surged from typical low single digits to nearly double digits, with borrow rates briefly topping 11%, a level last seen since January 2025.
Aave’s interest rates adjust automatically based on a lending pool’s utilization rate: when large wallets withdrew hundreds of millions of USDT, the pool’s utilization rate surged above 90%, leaving fewer tokens available for new borrowers and pushing rates sharply higher.
While it’s unclear who exactly caused the spike, some suggest it mostly comes from a small number of addresses linked to HTX’s “Recovery” wallet and a secondary account, according to an analysis of onchain data shared by an anonymous on-chain observer known as Deso on X.
Amid the on-chain activity, liquidity in Aave’s USDT pool plunged, with some estimates suggesting that available liquidity briefly dipped below $150 million at the peak of the volatility.
Data from Parsec shows that HTX’s wallets withdrew nearly $900 million in USDT from the Aave pool during the same timeframe.
Whales Dominate DeFi
For a sense of how much influence HTX’s wallet has, it has moved over $3.6 billion through the USDT pool in the past 30 days. As of press time, it holds more than $1.7 billion in USDT on Aave — over 32% of the pool’s total reserves — making it the largest single liquidity provider.
Fund Flows – Parsec
In a series of X posts, Deso alleged that only a few HTX-linked addresses were responsible for the massive liquidity movement, which dramatically swung Aave’s USDT rates within hours.
Although these moves could reflect savvy treasury management — like earning yield — they also show how much DeFi liquidity remains in the hands of a few large players, with Deso claiming that HTX’s on-chain activity aligning with the Aave USDT spike “shows exactly how centralized DeFi’s become, how subject it is to cartel movement…”
HTX did not immediately respond to The Defiant’s request for comment.
In early July, Aave outpaced the overall growth of DeFi over the past three months, gaining market share as more capital flowed into major protocols.
By the end of Q2, Aave’s total value locked had climbed to over $25.4 billion, a 52% increase from $16.7 billion in April, according to data from DefiLlama. Over the same period, total DeFi TVL grew 26%, from $92 billion to $116 billion.
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