This weekend, the value of the MANTRA token (OM) misplaced 90% of its $6 billion market cap, a collapse that, in keeping with its CEO, was the work of centralized exchanges initiating “reckless forced closures” and never a rugpull.
MANTRA is a real-world asset (RWA) mission that signed a billion-dollar cope with Dubai builders to tokenize varied belongings, together with actual property and knowledge facilities.
As its worth dropped, X customers speculated that MANTRA insiders could have rugpulled the token and claimed that its telegram chat was deleted in the course of the drop.
Nonetheless, MANTRA CEO John Patrick Mullin refutes these claims. Mullin denied any notion of insider promoting and supplied a hyperlink to the still-online MANTRA telegram chat, claiming that its bot briefly shut it down after detecting spam.
Sherpas, OMies, and broader crypto group,
First off, the workforce and I vastly admire the help that we now have acquired over the previous a number of hours, which we consider is a testomony to the robust help MANTRA has amongst its buyers and group.
We’ve decided that…
— JP Mullin (🕉, 🏘️) (@jp_mullin888) April 13, 2025
Who’s accountable?
Mullin attributes OM’s drastic worth drop to “reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges on OM account holders” with out warning. He additionally suggests, with out giving names, that one alternate might be accountable and that it probably doesn’t start with a “C” or a “B.”
Mullin additionally mentioned the timing of the incident throughout low liquidity hours “points to a degree of negligence at best, or possibly intentional market positioning taken by centralized exchanges.”
Alphanonce reported that Mullin addressed the incident at RWA Summit, claiming, “Large investors using $OM as collateral were liquidated,” and {that a} “post mortem” is coming quickly.
Each Binance and crypto funding agency Laser Digital have distanced themselves from OM’s token fallout. Lookonchain additionally notes how 5 hours earlier than the collapse, $12.6 million price of OM was despatched to a pockets linked to enterprise capitalist Shane Shin. This sum is now price roughly $1.6 million.
Crypto sleuth ZachXBT was additionally not impressed with one in every of MANTRA’s public addresses, whereas Wu Blockchain highlighted how MANTRA has lied about FTX investments prior to now.
