Mantra CEO denies insider OM token dump, says Arkham ‘mislabeled’ wallets

Update (April 14, 1:15 pm UTC): This article has been updated to add comments by Mantra CEO John Mullin from an AMA event hosted by Cointelegraph.Update (April 14, 4:33 pm UTC): This article has been updated with data from Arkham Intelligence.

Mantra CEO John Mullin denied reports suggesting large-scale token transfers by major Mantra investors in the days leading up to the sharp collapse of the OM token, while speaking in an AMA hosted by Cointelegraph on April 14.

“The Mantra association, our key investors, our advisers — no one has sold, and we are going to categorically deny and also provide verifiable proof onchain proof that this is the case,” Mullin stated in the AMA.

Previous reports suggested that Laser Digital, a strategic Mantra investor, cashed out large portions of Mantra (OM) tokens before the cryptocurrency collapsed on April 13.

Laser Digital is a digital asset business backed by Nomura. The firm announced a strategic investment in Mantra in May 2024.

At least two wallets linked to Laser Digital were among 17 wallets that moved a combined 43.6 million OM tokens — worth about $227 million at the time — to exchanges before the crash, the blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain reported on April 13, citing Arkham Intelligence data.

According to Arkham data, a Laser Digital-linked wallet, “0x84EE7,” sent 6.5 million OM tokens to an unlabelled Arkham wallet address, “0xB37DB,” on April 11.

The “0xB37DB” address subsequently dumped the tokens on the OKX exchange in several transactions, Arkham data shows.

Arkham did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request to comment on Laser Digital’s wallets’ tags.

Laser Digital-linked wallet and the 6.5 million OM transfer to 0xB37DB. Source: Arkham

Laser Digital subsequently denied Lookonchain reports alleging its involvement in the OM crash, claiming that the referenced wallets did not belong to it.

Source: Laser Digital

“Laser has no involvement in the recent price collapse of $OM,” Laser said in an X post on April 14. “Assertions circulating on social media that link Laser to ‘investor selling’ are factually incorrect and misleading,” the firm added.

In addition to Laser Digital, some social media reports also linked the OM onchain activity to an address allegedly tied to another Mantra investor, Shorooq Partners.

According to Lookonchain data, a wallet associated with Shane Shin, a founding partner of Shorooq Partners, received 2 million OM tokens on April 13 at 11:52 am UTC, hours before the crash.

Mantra (OM) flows by a wallet potentially linked to Shorooq’s Shane Shin. Source: Arkham

The tokens came from a previously dormant wallet that received 2.75 million OM in April 2024, Lookonchain reported.

Shin also subsequently denied selling the tokens, stating that the transfers implied wallet-to-wallet transactions rather than transfers to an exchange.

Source: Shane Shin

“No tokens have been sold. The community can check the wallet address and all its transactions to understand the situation fully. Here is the wallet address for full transparency,” Shin wrote in a post on X, attaching his wallet address.

Both Laser Digital and Shorooq were among the investors in the $109 million Mantra Ecosystem Fund (MEF) announced on April 7.

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“It is important to note up front that Shorooq (its funds and founding partners) and Mantra (management and team members) have not sold OM tokens in the lead up to, or during, this crash,” a spokesperson for Shorooq told Cointelegraph.

The representative also emphasized that Shorooq is an equity investor in Mantra, not solely a token investor. “This means that our focus is on the long-term growth of the project,” the spokesperson added.

While denying the accuracy of Arkham’s data, Mantra CEO Mullin stressed that the company was not aware of the identity of the addresses dumping OM prior to its crash.

“I don’t know who those wallets belong to,” Mullin said during the Cointelegraph AMA, adding:

Mullin said that Mantra believes the wallets were “mislabeled by Arkham,” adding that the platform provided its key wallet addresses in a transparency report published on April 8.

As OKX and Binance were among exchanges that saw significant OM activity before and during the crash, both exchanges addressed the issue. OKX founder Star Xu called the incident a “big scandal to the whole crypto industry.”

While Mantra CEO John Mullin attributed the OM crash to one exchange, Binance hinted at “cross-exchange liquidations.”

“Our initial findings indicate that the developments over the past day are a result of cross-exchange liquidations,” Binance said in an announcement on April 14.

In an update on April 14, OKX said that Mantra’s tokenomics had gone through major changes since October 2024 and flagged suspicious activity across multiple exchanges.

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