It began without a sound. The moment a few small liquidation orders carved into MEXC’s order book, DeFi’s dream quietly began to crumble. When NAIT’s price fell from $0.15 to $0.08, everyone believed “it will bounce back.” But the market had already departed from “human time.”
The Moment Algorithms Take Control
NAIT, used as lending collateral, reached liquidation thresholds with minimal price movements. Bots repeated sales emotionlessly, and each transaction on MEXC’s thin order book triggered new liquidations. Like falling dominoes pushing over the next, sales begat more sales.
One analyst remarked: “The moment you cross the threshold, the floor disappears. All that remains is momentum.”
That “momentum” was the very precision of automation that DeFi had prided itself on. Ironically, the system was functioning perfectly. That was the reason for its collapse.
A Market That Lost Its Eyes
Eventually, buyers vanished. All that remained were liquidation bots from lending protocols, faithful to their commands. The chart drew a flat line like an electrocardiogram, trading halted, and the heartbeat of a breathing market disappeared.
Someone muttered, “It hit bottom.” But that wasn’t recovery — it was “the silence after death.” In a world where liquidity has dried up, neither price nor hope exists.
A Ghost from Two Years Ago
Many felt a sense of déjà vu at this sight. The Venus collapse of 2022. Back then, too, automatic liquidations cascaded, and millions of dollars vanished. The only difference was speed. NAIT reached the same conclusion in mere minutes. “Faster, more precise, more merciless” — this was the face of evolved DeFi.
The Price of Freedom
DeFi has championed “freedom without central authority.” But that freedom is also “destruction with no one to stop it.” Code continues executing commands, moving the world while ignoring human emotion and context.
The NAIT collapse isn’t a story about a token. It was an incident that demonstrated just how ruthless a financial system can become when human judgment is eliminated.
The market asks once more: “Is this the price of freedom, or the beginning of the end?”
