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

Mantra’s OM token price crashed by 90% in less than 24 hours on April 13, 2025. The token fell from roughly $6.30 to trade at lows of $0.5 on Monday, wiping out over $6 billion in market capitalization from its former highs.

At the time of writing, it had recovered somewhat to trade at $0.84.

Mantra’s crew reacted swiftly to the fall-off, with 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.

Rather than project team efforts, Mullin claims that “reckless liquidations” on a centralized exchange (CEX) sparked the downfall.

“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. Suggesting that holdings were “closed without margin calls or notice,” he implied that 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.”

However, many in the crypto community remain dubious despite these reassurances.

“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.suggesting that the timing of the crash may have induced an even steeper price drop.

Mullin notably stated that the disaster occurred “during low-liquidity hours on a Sunday evening UTC (early morning Asia time), which may have deepened the price moves.” He maintained this pointed to “a degree of negligence at least, or maybe intentional market positioning taken by centralized exchanges.”

The episode comes as Bybit was reportedly hit by a $1.4 billion heist and amid several recent crypto market upheavals including the Libra memecoin fiasco. Together, these occurrences have seen billions in investment losses in early 2025.

Mantra had become somewhat well-known in the real-world asset (RWA) tokenizing scene prior to the setback. The initiative struck a $1 billion deal with investment firm DAMAC in January 2025 to tokenize various assets including real estate and data centers on the Mantra blockchain.

Mantra also secured a virtual asset service provider license from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in February 2025, thereby strengthening its footprint in the Middle East market. This license enabled the enterprise to operate in the United Arab Emirates as a digital asset service provider.

Supported by several financing partners like Laser Digital, Shorooq Partners, Brevan Howard Digital, and others, Mantra recently launched the MEF (Mantra Ecosystem Fund). The fund was created to support RWA and DeFi initiatives around the globe over a four-year period.

Though precise details are still scarce, the Mantra team has announced intentions to engage in a community conversation on X regarding the latest occurrence. According to Mullin, the basic tokenomics remain unchanged, while all team and investor tokens remain locked according to their publicly stated vesting timelines.

Nevertheless, rebuilding investor confidence poses a huge task.

“Incidents like this test investor confidence and raise a critical question about how to ensure tokenized assets can be made safer for mainstream adoption,” said Kronos Research CEO Hank Huang.

Both investors and industry analysts are eagerly awaiting further explanations and potentially government reactions to one of the most dramatic developments in the cryptocurrency market of 2025.