Bitcoin Holds Strong Above $80,000 Amid Market Volatility, Mantra Token Collapses by 90%

Over the weekend, Bitcoin reclaimed the $86,000 mark in a significant comeback while Mantra token experienced a catastrophic 90% price

Bitcoin (BTC) price showed resilience above the $84,000 mark over the weekend as Mantra token underwent a catastrophic 90% price collapse in what some traders are calling the largest project failure since the LUNA crisis, signaling continued volatility in the cryptocurrency markets.

Crypto market news: Price movements, volume

This week saw the crypto market move in contrasting directions as macroeconomic concerns persist. While Mantra token experienced a dramatic downturn, Bitcoin displayed remarkable durability.

These divergent trends highlight the ongoing volatility in the digital asset market, especially as Bitcoin shows signs of maturing as a store of value against economic uncertainty.

Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to remove some key goods from ongoing trade tariffs against China, market sentiment shifted significantly. Beginning with a plummet to five-month lows, this policy change helped spark a weekend rally that pushed Bitcoin to an eleven-day high of $86,000, presenting a 7% weekly gain.

However, analysts remain wary about the strength of this rebound with trader Peter highlighting that the price movements are “more corrective than impulsive.” Meanwhile, Rekt Capital observed that Bitcoin closed above its daily downtrend line, yet sustained upward momentum hinges on successful retests.

In other relevant crypto news, an NFT trader has pleaded guilty and faces up to six years in prison for underreporting about $13 million in earnings from trading CryptoPunks.

Reporting a total income understatement of $13.1 million and a tax due reduction of about $3.2 million, 45-year-old Waylon Wilcox pleaded guilty to submitting fraudulent income tax returns for 2021 and 2022.

Bitcoin price action

BTC/USD is currently trading around the $84,400 mark at the time of writing.

The way Bitcoin performs in the middle of current market volatility supports its developing story as a store-of-value asset.

Highlighting a temporary halt in purchasing activity, Strategy is planning to buy additional Bitcoin after co-founder Michael Saylor highlighted the company’s goal to keep buying the digital asset in March 2024.

With a total unrealized gain of about $8.6 billion, the company’s most recent acquisition of 22,048 Bitcoin on March 31 increased its overall holdings to 528,185 BTC.

According to the technical indicators on the cryptocurrency, there are promising signals of recovery as Bitcoin broke above its resistance line and found strong support above $79,000, a level at which approximately 40,000 Bitcoin were accumulated, according to Glassnode.

Despite needing confirmation, author of Bollinger Bands John Bollinger proposed that Bitcoin is forming a “classic Bollinger Band W bottom.”

Among a $5 trillion selloff in the stock market, Bitcoin’s relative stability gives credence to its use case as a store-of-value asset rather than a simply risk-on investment. As Blockstream CEO Adam Back predicts inflation to rise to 10–15% over the next decade, this would make Bitcoin more appealing as a wealth storage unit in competition with gold.

Mantra token experiences flash crash, down nearly 90%

On April 13, Mantra token underwent a catastrophic collapse, falling by over 90% from about $6.3 to less than $0.50, effectively wiping out most of its nearly $6 billion market capitalization.

The sharp decline in the token price has sparked significant concern among investors, with some classifying it as potentially the largest “rug pull” since the LUNA/FTX debacle.

Attributing the price slide to “reckless liquidations” that are currently being investigated, the Mantra team stated that “one thing we want to be clear on: this was not our team. We will provide more details on what happened as soon as we can; we are investigating this now,” the teams said in an April 13 post on X.

Assuring the community that the project’s Telegram channel remains active and that the team’s tokens are still in their possession, Mantra co-founder JP Mullin responded to the collapse. “We are here and not going anywhere,” Mullin added, mentioning the team’s OM token verification addresses.

The incidence comes amid several high-profile token collapses and cybersecurity events in early 2025, including the Libra memecoin meltdown and the $1.4 billion Bybit hack, both resulting in billions of dollars in investor losses.

The steep fall in Mantra’s price is especially noteworthy given its recent well-publicized projects in the Middle East. In January 2025, Mantra and investment conglomerate DAMAC signed a $1 billion deal to tokenize various assets on the Mantra blockchain.

Moreover, in February 2025, the project obtained a virtual asset service provider (VASP