Crypto Crash: OM Token Drops 90%, Is an Exchange to Blame?

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The folks at Mantra have a tale to tell—a tale of greed, accidents, and some very suspicious exchanges. You see, the real-world tokenized asset blockchain, Mantra, saw its native token, OM, plummet by 90%—like a bad sitcom finale—thanks to exchanges pulling the rug from under unsuspecting traders. One exchange, unnamed for now, seems to have been the culprit. But we’ll get to that in a second, and no, it wasn’t Binance (surprise!).

On April 13, OM’s price took a nosedive from $6.30 to less than $0.50, wiping out more than $6 billion from its market cap. No, that wasn’t a typo. SIX BILLION. Gone. Vanished. Poof.

“We’ve figured out that the OM market movement was triggered by reckless forced closures by centralized exchanges,” said John Mullin, Mantra’s co-founder. He added in an April 13 statement on X: “The way this crash went down, with a sudden dive and no warning, makes us think someone just hit the ‘sell’ button without telling anyone.”

“And the fact it all happened during low-liquidity hours on a Sunday evening UTC, or early Monday morning in Asia, smells fishy. Either someone’s gross negligence or…well, let’s just say we wouldn’t put it past some exchanges to move things around for a little market positioning.”

Mullin has a suspect in mind, though he’s not quite naming names yet. “But don’t worry, it wasn’t Binance,” he told an X user. I guess that’s a relief, unless you’re a Binance fan.

In case you want more details, there’s an upcoming Mantra community connect event on X where Mullin promises to spill the beans—maybe. Time will tell.

Of course, conspiracy theories are already spreading like wildfire. Some say it was a “rug pull,” while others claim the Mantra team took out a massive loan using their own tokens as collateral—only to fall victim to a sudden risk change from their lender. Cue the dramatic music!

But Mullin’s here to deny the rumors. He took to X, saying, “We did not have a loan, and no one’s orchestrating any rug pulls here. Our tokens are locked up and following the vesting periods we shared. And for those doubting us, our wallet addresses are online and visible. Go ahead, take a look.”

After the dust settled, OM did stage a minor recovery—briefly climbing above $1. But, like your New Year’s resolutions, that didn’t last long. It’s back down to $0.7894, according to CoinGecko. A sad, slow climb back to where it once was—or at least close to it.

OM hit its peak of just under $9 on February 23, but now? Well, it’s down more than 91% from that high. Ouch.

Millions of Mantra Tokens Moved Before the Big Drop

According to Spot On Chain, a blockchain analytics platform, some big whales (we’re talking 14.27 million OM tokens) moved their holdings to crypto exchange OKX just three days before the crash. And it’s not like these whales were small fry. In March, they scooped up 84.15 million OM for a cool $564.7 million.

“Now, after the 90% crash, the remaining 69.08 million OM is worth a mere $62.2 million, meaning they’ve lost about $406.3 million,” said Spot On Chain. That’s the kind of loss that’ll make you rethink your life choices. But hey, maybe they were hedging their bets elsewhere. Who knows?

On the flip side, Lookonchain, another blockchain analytics platform, revealed that at least 17 wallets had deposited 43.6 million OM into exchanges since April 7. That’s about 4.5% of the circulating supply. I guess everyone’s just out here moving millions like it’s no big deal. Meanwhile, Mantra is striking deals like it’s going out of style—$1 billion deal with investment giant DAMAC to tokenize assets. Because, you know, that’s just how they roll.

And in case you didn’t know, Mantra also bagged a virtual asset service provider license from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority back in February. So, yeah, they’ve got that going for them.

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2025-04-14 09:34