Mantra’s Meltdown: OM Token Crashes 90% as Questions Mount Over “Reckless Liquidations”
Mantra’s OM token, the native cryptocurrency of the real-world asset tokenization blockchain, fell dramatically on April 13, 2025 from roughly $6.30 to under $0.50 in less than 24 hours, so wiping over 90% of its $6 billion market capitalization. Though it still lags well below its former trading levels, the token has somewhat rebounded to hover at $0.84 at the time of writing.
Mantra Team Blames “Reckless Liquidations” While Investors Cry Foul
Investors Cry Foul Mantra’s crew reacted fast to the fall-off, co-founder and CEO John Patrick Mullin refuting claims of a “rug pull”—a term used when engineers walk away from a project after selling their interests. Mullin claims that rather than project team efforts, “reckless forced closures” on centralized exchanges (CEXs) led to the catastrophe.
“The timing and depth of the crash suggest that a very sudden closure of account positions was started without sufficient warning or notice,” Mullin said on social networking platform X. Claiming holdings were “closed without margin calls or notice,” he suggested exchange-initiated liquidations set off the cascade.
Following this line, the official Mantra tweeted: “Mantra community — we want to reassure you that MANTRA is essentially robust. Reckless liquidations set off today’s events; nothing related to the project was involved.”
Community Skepticism and Alternative Theories
Many in the crypto community are still dubious despite these guarantees. “What kind of statement is this OM went down 90%+ from $5.9B to $500M mkt cap in a single candle?” onchain analyst ZachXBT asked in response.
Other ideas that are floating about social media include:
Team shake-up concerns: Rumors of key “Kabal team” resignations allegedly weakened investor confidence
Tokenomics issues: Allegations that the team controls up to 90% of the token supply raised fears of insider selling
Airdrop discontent: Community members reportedly expressed frustration over poor airdrop allocations and vesting terms
Did the Timing of the Crash Cause a More Severe Price Drop?
Mullin especially stated the disaster occurred “during low-liquidity hours on a Sunday evening UTC (early morning Asia time),” implying this timing contributed to the severity of the price drop. He maintained this pointed to “a degree of negligence at least, or maybe intentional market positioning taken by centralized exchanges.”
The episode coincides with a $1.4 billion Bybit heist and numerous recent crypto market upheavals including the Libra memecoin catastrophe. Early 2025’s investment losses of billions have come from these occurrences taken together.
Mantra’s Business Projects Now Under the Radar
Mantra had become somewhat well-known in the real-world asset (RWA) tokenizing scene before the disaster. The initiative struck a $1 billion agreement with investment firm DAMAC in January 2025 to tokenize different assets including real estate and data centers on the Mantra blockchain.
Mantra acquired a virtual asset service provider license from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in February 2025, therefore strengthening its place in the Middle East market. This license let the business run in the United Arab Emirates as a digital asset service provider.
Supported by many financing partners like Laser Digital, Shorooq Partners, Brevan Howard Digital, and others, Mantra also just opened the MEF (Mantra Ecosystem Fund). The fund was set up to help RWA and DeFi initiatives all around during a four-year span.
What’s Next for Mantra?
Though exact information is still lacking, the Mantra team has declared intentions to hold a community conversation on X on the latest occurrence. According to Mullin, the basic tokenomics are unaltered while all team and investor tokens remain locked based on their publicly stated vesting timelines.
Rebuilding investor confidence, though, is a big task. “Incidents like this test investor confidence and raise a critical question about how to ensure tokenized assets can be made safest for mainstream adoption,” said Kronos Research CEO Hank Huang.
Remains to be seen whether Mantra can bounce back from this sharp drop, which some experts likening to the May 2022 collapse of the Terra environment. Investors and industry analysts both are attentively waiting for more justifications and possible government reactions to one of the most dramatic developments in the cryptocurrency market of 2025.Retry Claude might make errors. Verify answers twice.
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