MANTRA CEO says ‘reckless’ exchanges caused OM token collapse
This weekend, the price of the MANTRA token (OM) lost 90% of its $6 billion market cap, a collapse that, according to its CEO, was the work of centralized exchanges initiating “reckless forced closures” and not a rugpull.
MANTRA is a real-world asset (RWA) project that signed a billion-dollar deal with Dubai developers to tokenize various assets, including real estate and data centers.
As its price dropped, X users speculated that MANTRA insiders may have rugpulled the token and claimed that its telegram chat was deleted during the drop.
However, MANTRA CEO John Patrick Mullin refutes these claims. Mullin denied any notion of insider selling and provided a link to the still-online MANTRA telegram chat, claiming that its bot briefly shut it down after detecting spam.
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Who’s responsible?
Mullin attributes OM’s drastic price drop to “reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges on OM account holders” without warning. He also suggests, without giving names, that one exchange could be responsible and that it likely doesn’t begin with a “C” or a “B.” Some of the largest exchanges that list OM include Binance, OKX, Bybit, Crypto.com, and MEXC.
Mullin also said the timing of the incident during 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 soon.
Both Binance and crypto investment firm Laser Digital have distanced themselves from OM’s token fallout. Lookonchain also notes how five hours before the collapse, $12.6 million worth of OM was sent to a wallet linked to venture capitalist Shane Shin. This sum is now worth roughly $1.6 million.
Crypto sleuth ZachXBT was also not impressed with one of MANTRA’s public addresses, while Wu Blockchain highlighted how MANTRA has lied about FTX investments in the past.
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