A Bizarre $5.4B Loss Has Left Investors Devastated

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

The new week is off to a silent start as bitcoin looks to establish a foothold above the trendline, characterizing the downtrend line from record highs, with $86K emerging as resistance over the weekend. FLR, TRX and SOL beat the broader market, while the RWA protocol Mantra’s OM token tanked during the Asian hours.

Mantra blamed the 90% crash to 70 cents on forced liquidations on crypto exchanges, while blockchain sleuth Spot On Chain pointed to a significant movement of coins to crypto exchange OKX three days before the crash. Meanwhile, OKX’s CEO Star Xu called the OM token collapse a major scandal for the entire crypto industry, stressing that all on-chain data is publicly available for scrutiny across major exchanges.

In other news, data tracked by IntoTheBlock showed a renewed uptick in transaction volumes on Virtuals Protocol, a blockchain project enabling the creation, ownership, and deployment of AI agents. Data tracking platform Arkham Intelligence said that Mechanism’s Capital Andrew Kang doubled his bullish bet on BTC, now holding a long worth $200 million.

New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) discussed the relative stability of the crypto market and its orderly behavior during last week’s carnage in the traditional markets, saying it could become a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle.

Still, some investors anticipate a range-bound trading pattern for bitcoin (BTC) due to concerns that the U.S.-China trade tensions will not be resolved quickly. This follows President Trump’s late Friday decision to exempt certain products from Chinese tariffs, a gesture perceived as a willingness to negotiate.

“BTC continues to consolidate within the $80k-$90k range and could continue trading sideways, adopting a “wait and see” approach to the tariff situation,’ QCP Capital said in a Telegram broadcast, noting the weekend demand for the $100K calls.

Per Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramovicz, there is deep skepticism in cheering Trump’s late Friday pivot. “This is still a sell rallies environment. Tariff uncertainty, growth weakness, a Fed risking policy errors in both directions and fund outflows all suggest wider spreads ahead,” Abramovic quoted Deutsche Bank’s Credit Analyst Steve Caprio as saying.

Some market participants expressed concerns about the dwindling demand for the spot bitcoin ETFs, which registered an outflow of over $700 million last week, according to data source Farside Investors. “ETF demand is cooling. A sharp drop in bitcoin spot ETF assets signals institutional outflows. Watch this trend closely,” blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant said on X.

Lastly, major U.S. equity indexes, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, appeared headed for the death cross, a bearish technical pattern involving the 50-day simple moving average’s (SMA) move below the 200-day SMA and the dollar index looked oversold as per the 14-day relative strength index. Both observations called for caution in risk assets.

The key events and data to watch out for the week ahead are Monday’s stock market reaction to Trump’s tariff exclusions, Wednesday’s U.S. retail sales and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech and earnings reports on Wall Street on Friday. Stay Alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
  • April 14, 2025: Filecoin (FIL) nv25 “Teep” mainnet upgrade means FEVM will now support transient storage, aligning with Ethereum’s EIP-1153.
  • April 15: The first SmarDEX (SDEX) halving means that from this date, the SDEX token’s distribution “will be halved for the next 12 months, reducing selling pressure by half for the coming year.”
  • April 16: HashKey Chain (HSK) mainnet upgrade enhances network stability and fee control capabilities.
  • April 17: EigenLayer (EIGEN) activates slashing on Ethereum mainnet, enforcing penalties for operator misconduct.
  • April 18: Pepecoin (PEP), a Layer 1 proof-of-work blockchain, undergoes its second halving, reducing block rewards to 15,625 PEP per block, decreasing new coin issuance and potentially affecting market dynamics.
  • April 21: Coinbase Derivatives will list XRP futures pending approval by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
• Macro
  • April 14: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele will join U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House for an official working visit.
  • April 14, 1:00 p.m.: Fed Governor Christopher J. Waller will deliver an “Economic Outlook” speech. Livestream link.
  • April 15, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases March consumer price inflation data.
    • Core Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.7%
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.7%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.6%
  • April 16, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Census Bureau releases March retail sales data.
    • Retail Sales MoM Est. 1.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%
    • Retail Sales YoY Prev. 3.1%
  • April 16, 9:45 a.m.: Bank of Canada releases its latest interest rate decision; this is followed by a press conference 45 minutes later.
    • Policy Interest Rate Est. 2.75% vs. Prev. 2.75%
  • April 16, 1:30 p.m.: Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell will deliver an “Economic Outlook” speech. Livestream link.
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • April 22: Tesla (TSLA), post-market
  • April 30: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Venus DAO is discussing the forced liquidation of the remaining debt owed by a BNB bridge exploiter account that “supplied extraneously minted BNB to Venus and generated an over-collateralized debt position.”
  • Aave DAO is discussing taking further steps to deprecate Synthetix’s sUSD on Aave V3 Optimism over technical developments that have “compromised its ability to consistently maintain its peg.”
  • GMX DAO is discussing the establishment of a GMX Reserve on Solana, which would involve bridging $500,000 in GMX to the Solana network and transferring the funds to the GMX-Solana Treasury.
  • April 14, 10 a.m.: Stacks to host a livestream with recent announcements from the project.
  • April 14, 12 p.m.: MiL.k to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with Arbitrum.
  • April 15, 10 a.m.: Injective to hold an X Spaces session with Guardian.
• Unlocks
  • April 15: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 4.37% of its circulating supply worth $15.93 million.
  • April 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.01% of its circulating supply worth $27.82 million.
  • April 18: Official Trump (TRUMP) to unlock 20.25% of its circulating supply worth $337.71 million.
  • April 18: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.65% of its circulating supply worth $81 million.
  • April 18: UXLINK (UXLINK) to unlock 11.09% of its circulating supply worth $18.33 million.
  • April 18: Immutable (IMX) to unlock 1.37% of its circulating supply worth $10.23 million.
• Token Launches
  • April 14: KernelDAO (KERNEL) to be listed on Binance, Gate.io, LBank, KuCoin, MEXC, and others.
  • April 16: Badger (BADGER), Balacner (BAL), Beta Finance (BETA), Cortex (CTXC), Cream Finance (CREAM), Firo (FIRO), Kava Lend (KAVA), NULS (NULS), Prosper (PROS), Status (SNT), TROY (TROY), UniLend Finance (UFT), VIDT DAO (VIDT), and aelf (ELF) to be delisted from Binance.
  • April 22: Hyperlane to airdrop its HYPER tokens.

Conferences:

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• MANTRA’s OM token plummeted 90% in one hour early Monday, dropping from over $6 to 37 cents, erasing $5.4 billion in market cap.
• Since April 7, 2025, 17 wallets, including two linked to Laser Digital (a MANTRA investor), deposited 43.6M $OM tokens ($227M, 4.5% of circulating supply) into exchanges like OKX and Binance, just before a major price crash, raising suspicions of insider selling or manipulation.

• The MANTRA team denied involvement, attributing the crash to “reckless liquidations” by exchanges during low-liquidity hours, claiming their tokens remain locked and verifiable on-chain, though community trust is shaken.
• Investors expressed devastation on X, with users such as @Jeetburner, claiming to have lost over $3.5 million. Critics accused MANTRA and Binance of a “liquidity exit” and threatened legal action, while MANTRA’s Telegram group closed to new users.
• The incident may impact credibility in the RWA sector as real-world bigwigs – such as UAE real estate giant DAMAC, in Mantra’s case – keep wary of projects with volatile token prices.

Derivatives Positioning

• Perpetual funding rates for more major tokens, excluding XRP, remain mildly positive below the annualized 10%, reflecting a moderately bullish positioning.
• BTC’s rally has stalled near $85K in the past 24 hours. Futures open interest has dropped from $16.4 billion to $15 billion, a sign that traders are taking some risk off the table.
• XRP’s recovery since April 7 has not been backed by an uptick in open interest, raising questions in the market about the sustainability of gains.
• On Deribit, the short-term BTC and ETH options skew remains negative, but the so-called put bias has weakened significantly since last Monday. The mid-term and longer-term skews have flipped back in favor of calls.

Market Movements:

• BTC is up 0.66% from 4 p.m. ET Friday at $84,404.14 (24hrs: -0.61%)
• ETH is up 4.5% at $1,642.47 (24hrs: +0.94%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 3.1% at 2,489.90 (24hrs: -1.03%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 8 bps at 3.01%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0177% (6.4725% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is down 0.67% at 99.44
• Gold is up 2.19% at $3,243.50/oz
• Silver is up 1.54% at $32.31/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed +1.18% at 33,982.36
• Hang Seng closed +2.4% at 21,417.40
• FTSE is up 2.11% at 8,132.15
• Euro Stoxx 50 is up 2.32% at 4,898.29
• DJIA closed on Friday +1.56% at 40,212.71
• S&P 500 closed +1.81% at 5,363.36
• Nasdaq closed +2.06% at 16,724.46
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +2.49% at 23,587.80
• S&P 40 Latin America closed +1.91% at 2,298.75
• U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 5 bps at 4.44%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 1.37% at 5,465.00
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 1.57% at 19,102.75
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.99% at 40,800.00

Bitcoin Stats:

• BTC Dominance: 63.47 (-0.12%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01944 (1.94%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 893 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $44.0
• Total Fees: 4.24 BTC / $358,663
• CME Futures Open Interest: 133,945
• BTC priced in gold: 26.0/oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 7.37%

Technical Analysis

• BTC topped the bear market trendline on Saturday but has since struggled to build momentum on the breakout.
• The weekend high of $86K is the immediate resistance, followed by the April 2 highs above $88,600.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $299.98 (+10.15%), up 1.96% at $305.85 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $175.5 (+3.47%), up 1.83% at $178.51
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$15.28 (+6.48%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $12.51 (+6.56%), up 1.12% at $12.65
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.06 (+3.98%), up 1.98% at $7.20
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $7.07 (+3.67%), up 0.71% at $7.12
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.50 (+5.19%), up 2.27% at $7.67
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $12.91 (+3.12%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $33.76 (+3.46%), down 2.22% at $33.01
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $44.08 (+7.33%), unchanged in pre-market

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: -$1 million
• Cumulative net flows: $35.46 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~1.10 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: -$29.2 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.29 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~3.38 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• The total value locked in Ostium Protocol, an open-sourced, decentralized exchange on Ethereum Layer 2 Arbitrum.
• It’s sign of growing demand for DeFi as the sub-sector held steady, defying the past week’s market crash.

While You Were Sleeping

• Bitcoin Options Play Shows $100K Target Back in Bulls’ Crosshair (CoinDesk): Traders chase call options as BTC’s price recovers, with the $100K call option becoming the most favored bet, with a notional open interest of nearly $1.2 billion.
• Mantra’s OM Crashes 90% in Bizarre Selloff as Team Alleges ‘Forced Liquidations’ (CoinDesk); The Mantra team attributed the price drop, which led to over $50 million in liquidations on OM-tracked futures, to reckless liquidations by centralized exchanges, not issues with the project’s fundamentals.
• Bitcoin Flat as White House Pushes Mixed Messages on Technology Tariffs (CoinDesk): Bitcoin held above $84K as East Asia trading opened, with markets rebounding on tariff relief for Chinese electronics, though BTSE’s Jeff Mei cautioned the rally may not last.
• Goldman Puts $4,000 Gold on the Agenda as Hunt for Havens Grows (Bloomberg): Goldman sees a 45% chance of a U.S. recession, predicting gold could hit $3,880 by year-end if it occurs, driven by ETF inflows as investors hedge against falling risk assets.
• China’s Xi Says ‘Protectionism Will Lead Nowhere’ as He Starts Southeast Asia Outreach Amid Tariff Worries (CNBC): Xi, visiting Vietnam today and tomorrow, warned in ruling party paper “Nhan Dan” that trade wars hurt everyone and urged closer China-Vietnam ties in technology and supply chains.
• BOJ May Mull Halting Rate Hikes If Yen Nears 130, Goldman Says (Bloomberg): A stronger yen could squeeze exporters’ margins, lower import costs, deter investment and dampen wage growth — making it harder for the central bank to justify further rate hikes.

In the Ether