Whales Are Bailing: Why AAVE Just Crashed 22% After the $294M KelpDAO Hack

The cryptocurrency industry saw the most violent hack of 2026 on Saturday evening when an unknown perpetrator breached KelpDAO’s security and drained almost $300 million worth of its liquid staking token, rsETH. They managed to act quickly, depositing the stolen funds into several lending protocols, borrowing money against them, and one of them just experienced a massive investor exodus as its own token crashed…