RWA-focused Layer 1 blockchain MANTRA ($OM) token crashes over 90% in price

The token of real-world asset (RWA) focused Layer 1 blockchain MANTRA ($OM) dramatically collapsed in price on Sunday, crashing over 90% in a matter of hours

A token focused on real-world assets (RWA) dramatically collapsed in price on Sunday. The token of the Layer 1 blockchain MANTRA ($OM) crashed more than 90% in a matter of hours, leaving investors scrambling to assess the fallout.

The $OM token, which began trading in August 2020, dipped about 10% between 5:20 pm UTC and 6:20 pm UTC, according to The Block's MANTRA Price Page, then suddenly crashed from its then-value of $5.21 down to its current value around $0.50, a stunning 90% plummet over the course of just 90 minutes.

A message posted by community lead Dustin McDaniel played down claims that the MANTRA team sold, shortly before the project's public-facing Telegram group became inaccessible. "I do not know anything until team has had time to look into [the price drop]," McDaniel acknowledged in a Telegram message.

MANTRA's X account posted an update at 8:51 pm UTC on Sunday night. "Today’s activity was triggered by reckless liquidations, not anything to do with the project," MANTRA wrote.

The project's co-founder, John Patrick Mullin, cited a "massive forced liquidation from a large OM investor on a CEX" in his own post. "Still working on the details, but we are here, and we're fixing this," he said.

MANTRA had previously faced claims that it was controlling large portions of the token's circulating supply, or "float," in a bid to manipulate the token's price.

But Mullin, in a response post on X, said that the token had been available for trading in August 2020. "OM has been in circulation since August 2020," Mullin wrote. "Longer than most of these people have been in crypto."

Mullin recently touted the project's strategic partnership with Dubai-based property development company DAMAC in an interview with crypto.news. "Beyond compliance, we’re driving real-world adoption through strategic partnerships – most notably with DAMAC Group, recently committing to tokenize more than US$1 billion in Dubai real estate," Mullin told the publication.

Some investors also pointed to MANTRA's total value locked (TVL) of only around $13 million, compared to its token's fully-diluted value of $9.5 billion, according to DefiLlama data, as a possible warning sign.

Insomniac, governance lead for growth firm Castle Labs, identified three wallets that had sent millions of dollars worth of $OM tokens to exchanges OKX and Binance in recent days, suggesting possible sales. One wallet received around $36 million worth of $OM tokens from a Binance address on March 21, then transferred around 4.3 million tokens to OKX across 8 transactions on Saturday.

Earlier this year, six members of the MANTRA DAO had been ordered by a Hong Kong court to disclose financial records, after being accused of misappropriating DAO assets in a lawsuit.

Mullin and the MANTRA team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block.