In the early morning, the RWA sector project MANTRA (OM) dropped 90% in a short time, plummeting from $6 to $0.5, with a market value evaporation of over $5.5 billion.

Three hours later, the MANTRA team released a statement, claiming that the drop was caused by irrational liquidation and was unrelated to the project itself, emphasizing that it was not done by the team.

Subsequently, OM rose from around $0.5 to $1.2, experiencing a brief short squeeze. According to Coinglass data, the liquidation amount for OM contracts reached $58 million within just four hours.

Before this crash, OM had gone through multiple violent price surges since last November, earning it the community nickname of a "manipulated token".

OTC Trading or Team Dumping? The Lifecycle of OM's High Control

Recently, the community and multiple data detection tool websites reported that OM whale addresses have been withdrawing and transferring to trading platforms, with rumors suggesting that OM has completed several OTC trades with discounts of 50% or more. When large holders start dumping, OTC buyers also fall into panic selling.

On March 25th, according to TheDataNerd, MANTRA's investment institution Laser Digital deposited 1.7 million OM tokens to Binance, worth $11.49 million. Last year, this wallet accumulated a total of 27 million OM tokens and currently holds 6.756 million OM tokens, valued at $45.67 million.

Yesterday, according to Arkham, the 0xA8...A84f address withdrew 776,000 OM tokens from the Polygon StakedOM contract, worth approximately $5.84 million.

Additionally, according to Genç Trader, wallet address 0x9a…1a28 transferred approximately $20 million worth of OM to OKX 23 hours ago. From past records, this address had withdrawn about $40 million worth of OM from Binance a month ago and was one of the whales that previously pumped the token's price.

The dumping by multiple OM whales is considered the direct cause of this crash, but the community believes this might have been premeditated.

Airdrop PUA

Last November, MANTRA officially announced a change in its airdrop rules, modifying the previous "3-month cliff period, followed by initial liquid distribution and 9-month linear unlock" to "shortening the cliff period to 1 month, followed by 11 months of linear unlock", which sparked strong community dissatisfaction.

Initially, MANTRA generated user enthusiasm through high-profile expectation management, claiming to distribute 50 million OM tokens and promising 20% unlock upon listing, with the airdrop to be completed within a month.

However, in actual implementation, MANTRA repeatedly modified the airdrop rules, first changing "immediate unlock" to "linear release starting after one month", and further postponing to "10% initial release, with the remainder vesting over three years". Coupled with changes in roadmap and token allocation structure, MANTRA essentially used prolonged vesting cycles to sediment community traffic into a long-term lock-up tool.

When user sentiment rebounded, the project introduced a governance voting mechanism to transfer responsibility under the guise of "community consensus", but in practice, voting rights were concentrated in the hands of the project team or affiliated parties, with highly controllable results. Finally, some early participants were excluded from the airdrop list, with the project team freezing rights under the pretext of "Sybil attack" without disclosing detailed evidence.

High Degree of Control

The reason OM continued to surge over the past six months is the team's high degree of control. According to KOL @nihaovand, they typically coordinate three waves of buying at different price ranges to drive token price up. Simultaneously, the project provides OTC exit channels for token holders. The funds obtained from these exits are then used to pump the token price, paving the way for the next wave of OTC capital inflow.

Previously, multiple sources reported that the MANTRA team controls 90% of OM token supply. Crypto analyst Mosi once wrote an article analyzing how a project with only $4 million in TVL could have over $10 billion in FDV, concluding that the team controls most of the OM circulation. The MANTRA team holds 792M OM (90% of supply) in a single wallet, and they haven't even bothered to distribute these supplies across multiple wallets.

Related Reading: 《Fake Circulation Volume, High-Profile Pumping: Revealing the High FDV Token Trading Technique》

What is OM's Real Circulation?

According to Mosi's analysis, OM's real circulation = 980 million (circulating supply) - 792 million OM (team-controlled portion) = 188 million OM

However, this number might not be accurate. The team still controls a significant portion of OM, using these tokens to perform Sybil attacks on their own airdrops, further extracting exit liquidity and continuing to control circulation. They deployed about 100 million OM for Sybil attacks on their own airdrops, so this portion should also be deducted from the real circulation.

Ultimately, OM's real circulation might be only 88 million OM. The low real circulation makes manipulating OM's price extremely easy and allows for easy liquidation of any short positions. Traders should fear shorting OM, as the team controls most of the circulation and can arbitrarily pump or dump the price.

Mosi believes that OM might involve Tritaurian Capital—a company that borrowed $1.5 million from @SOMA_finance (with @jp_mullin888 being SOMA's co-founder, and Tritaurian owned by Jim Preissler, who was JPM's boss at Trade.io)—as well as some Middle Eastern funds and market makers. These operations further compress the real circulation, making calculations more difficult.

This might also explain why they are reluctant to release airdrops and decided to implement a lock-up period. If they actually conducted the airdrop, the real circulation would significantly increase, potentially causing a substantial price drop.

This is not a complex financial engineering, but appears to be an intentional plan aimed at reducing the token's real circulation and easily pumping or dumping OM's price.

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