The team behind real-world tokenized asset blockchain Mantra says its native token’s sudden 90% plunge was caused by exchanges forcibly closing positions without notice, with one currently unnamed exchange potentially to blame.
On April 13, Mantra (OM) price dropped from $6.30 to below $0.50, rapidly shedding over 90% of its $6 billion market cap.
“We have determined that the OM market movements were triggered by reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges on OM account holders,” Mantra co-founder John Mullin wrote in an April 13 statement on X.
“The timing and depth of the crash suggest that a very sudden closure of account positions was initiated without sufficient warning or notice,” he added.
“That this happened during low-liquidity hours on a Sunday evening UTC, early morning Asia time, points to a degree of negligence at best, or possibly intentional market positioning taken by centralized exchanges.”
Mullin told an X user they believe one exchange “in particular” was to blame but said they were still “figuring out the details.” He told others that the centralized exchange in question wasn’t Binance.
Mantra has an upcoming community connect on X, where Mullin says the team would share more information.
Some traders allege the token collapse was a rug pull, while others are speculating the Mantra team had used their tokens as collateral to take out a massive loan from a centralized exchange and the team fell prey to a loan risk parameter change, then a margin call.
Mullin denied these theories in follow-up X posts, saying, “The team did not have a loan outstanding” and haven’t orchestrated a rug pull.
“Tokens remain locked and subject to the published vesting periods. OM’s tokenomics remain intact, as shared last week in our latest token report. Our token wallet addresses are online and visible,” Mullin said.
The price of OM staged a minor recovery in the aftermath of the price collapse, briefly returning above $1, but it is back down and currently trading around $0.7894, according to CoinGecko.
The token hit an all-time high of just under $9 on Feb. 23 and is now down over 91% from that figure.
Millions of Mantra tokens moved in the week prior to collapse
Blockchain analytics platform Spot On Chain said in an April 14 post to X that some OM whales moved 14.27 million tokens to the crypto exchange OKX three days before the crash. In March, the same whales picked up 84.15 million OM for $564.7 million.
“Now, after a brutal 90% drop, their remaining 69.08 million OM is worth just $62.2 million, putting their total estimated loss at a staggering $406.3 million,” Spot On Chain said.
“However, they may have hedged the position elsewhere, and it’s possible they contributed to the sharp drop.”
At the same time, blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain said that since April 7, at least 17 wallets deposited 43.6 million OM into crypto exchanges, representing 4.5% of the circulating supply.
Related: Mantra unveils $108M fund to back real-world asset tokenization, DeFi
In January 2025, Mantra and investment conglomerate DAMAC signed a $1 billion deal to tokenize the investment conglomerate’s various assets.
Meanwhile, Mantra announced on Feb. 19 that it had received a virtual asset service provider license from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority.
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