OKX "Mantra crash incident, there was price manipulation behind it"

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX said there was price manipulation related to the Mantra (OM) token price crash.

On the 13th (Korean time), OKX said on X (formerly Twitter) "(regarding the Mantra crash) claims distorting the facts continue," and "we confirmed indications that multiple accounts colluded to borrow Tether (USDT) using large amounts of Mantra tokens as collateral, artificially driving up the price."

OKX added, "We deemed this abnormal trading and requested account holders to remedy it, but they refused to cooperate," and "we then took control of the accounts, and soon the Mantra token plunge began." The losses incurred during the process were reportedly fully covered by the OKX security fund.

OKX also pointed out, "According to external analysts, the main cause of this price collapse appears to have been selling pressure from perpetual futures (perpetual) trading on external exchanges rather than on our exchange," and noted that there is still no explanation as to where the abnormally large amount of OM tokens flowed from or why a certain group was controlling a significant portion of the total supply.

Meanwhile, OKX said it is currently pursuing multiple lawsuits and legal procedures related to the incident. OKX criticized, "The Mantra team is shifting the blame to OKX while ignoring the facts instead of answering these serious allegations," calling it "very unprofessional." It added, "OKX will continue to fully cooperate with regulators and uphold user protection principles."

Earlier in April, Mantra experienced a crash from 6 dollars to 0.6 dollars. According to CoinMarketCap, as of 4:14 PM that day it was trading at 0.072 dollars, down 2.18% from the previous day.