This is the brutal reality of some altcoins.
OM, the native token of Mantra DAO (‘Mantra’), a leading L1 focused on real-world assets (RWAs), crashed by 85% in less than an hour at about 7 PM (BST) on Sunday, April 13.
It’s an incredible turnaround for the best-performing crypto asset in the top 100 in 2024, which generated a 5,900% profit last year.
I initially thought it was hacked, especially with such an abrupt and brutal price drop, as with Dimitra earlier this year.
However, according to JP Mullin, the Co-Founder and current CEO of MANTRA, one of the main entities behind the project, this was triggered by “reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges on OM account holders.”
Sherpas, OMies, and broader crypto community,
First off, the team and I greatly appreciate the support that we have received over the past several hours, which we believe is a testament to the strong support MANTRA has among its investors and community.
We have determined that…
— JP Mullin (🕉, 🏘️) (@jp_mullin888) April 13, 2025
In this tweet, he wrote:
“To be clear, this dislocation was not caused by the team, the MANTRA Chain Association, its core advisors, or MANTRA’s investors selling tokens…OM’s tokenomics remain intact, as shared last week in our latest token report. Our token wallet addresses are online and visible.”
I have my doubts.
One address being reviewed is 0x84EE76Aa90C9bACb96FCF8748a0cCC0C8BA9F248, with nearly 6.5 million OM transferred on April 11 to an unknown address.
This was reportedly one of several transactions of 43.6 million OM (valued at ~$227 million that day) sent to exchanges.
In the coming days, we’ll get a clearer picture of who is primarily responsible for this token crash. I have seen names thrown around, but I will refrain from identifying anyone until we have updated, accurate information.
.
Its price has dipped even further since this collapse, at roughly 60 cents.
If you go to the market cap tab, its circulating MC tanked from $5 billion to $485 million in less than one hour.
This now joins Terra Luna (LUNC and USTC) and FTX (FTT token) on the list of infamous crypto dumps in recent years.
Derivatives traders quickly swooped in to profit from this crash and volatility. Cryptoslate reported a 7,000% increase in derivative trading volume in just 24 hours, with Binance, Bybit and Bitget processing the lion’s share.
Additional thoughts
I’ve hardly taken an interest in this project and token, except for briefly reporting on it as a one-off for the best-performing assets in 2024.
This L1 claims to be “capable of adherence to real world regulatory requirements.” However, this event will have put off numerous would-be investors and other prospective stakeholders.
I also question how many more L1s we need in a highly competitive and oversaturated space, but I digress.
It’s very suspicious that such a large percentage of the OM circulating supply was sent to exchanges, not to mention that so many people had the token sitting on these centralised platforms instead of non-custodial alternatives such as Ledger devices, Trust, Atomic and Keplr desktop/mobile wallets.
Before you staunch crypto haters start celebrating and announcing, “I told you so,” don’t get ahead of yourselves — at least, not yet.
Mantra is one of many projects in this space, so paint all of them with the same brush.
While several projects are far less decentralised than people expect, they’re nothing like Bitcoin or Ethereum, especially the flagship crypto.
However, higher percentages of BTC and ETH are regrettably being snapped up by the largest institutions in the world, particularly with the massive holdings of asset managers, companies (notably MicroStrategy), and governments increasingly interested in the two largest cryptocurrencies.
This is a far cry from Satoshi’s plan of having Bitcoin as a novel P2P payments network, bypassing the need for financial institutions and other centralised entities.
Point of the story: Take some time to research a project you’re interested in, including:
— Who controls the largest crypto wallets for your favourite altcoin?
— What are the tokenomics?
— Who is behind the project, and what partnerships have they created?
— Who is using the project?
When assessing token holdings, I recommend using Bubblemaps.
It displays the % holdings of the 100 largest wallets for a given token. It can illustrate connections between different wallets for tokens that run on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Solana, Avalanche and other L1s (plus Base and other L2s).
What do you think about Mantra? Did you hold OM tokens before this price collapse? Will it recover? Comment below.
Also, before you say, “Buy the dip,” keep your pantaloons on and be realistic about the prospect of this bouncing back, especially when trust in this project has been broken.
You might also be interested in these stories:
Disclaimers
• This blog post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. The author assumes no responsibility for any decisions based on the content provided.
• My opinions in this piece may not reflect those of any news outlet, person, organisation, or other entity listed here.
• Please do your research before investing in any cryptocurrency assets, staking, NFTs, or other products associated with this space.
Featured image by Akif CUBUK at Shutterstock.