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Today's News Recap
Staking, Eh? - Canada to launch spot Solana ETFs with staking this week.
Mainnet Momentum - Ethereum Foundation shifts focus back to mainnet after Layer 2 focus.
BTC Resilience - Bitcoin dominance nears 4-year high as BTC defies global jitters.
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Two Bits
Unraveling MANTRA’s $OM Collapse
By: Sam Ruskin
On Sunday, the market watched in awe as MANTRA’s $OM token plummeted over 90%, erasing roughly $6 billion in market cap and dragging the price from $6 to $0.40. The crash caught a number off guard, especially after OM’s meteoric rise—delivering 100% monthly and 3,500% annual returns before the fall, but MANTRA had raised several red flags. The FDV to TVL ratio was ~400x (significantly lower than comparable chains), and the team supposedly controlled 90% of the supply.
Source: Messari
Theories are swirling about what fueled OM’s unsustainable climb and eventual nosedive. MANTRA co-founder JP Mullin pointed to “reckless forced liquidations” on centralized exchanges during low-liquidity hours, which they claim triggered a cascade of automated sell-offs. Some additional onchain sleuthing shows market makers may have been wash trading to create artificial demand, propping up OM’s price artificially for months before the rug was pulled. So, for example, if a market maker was long on exchange A, they may have gone short on exchange B, and large amounts of activity drew in real traders to bet on OM. There have also been reports of large OM transfers to exchanges before the crash, though the team insists no insider trading occurred. What happened cannot be fully determined at this time, but the information available to us points toward fraud.
Source: 0xArthur
This chaos underscores a bigger issue: the crypto market needs more transparency. When a team and its market makers can deceive investors into believing there is significant demand and price appreciation, it erodes trust. Investors deserve better visibility into exchange practices, order book dynamics, and token supply movements. Without more straightforward rules and real-time data, we’re left guessing, and that’s no way to build an investable, stable market.
