When the scythe wears a suit, the tears of retail become the best lubricant.

In the early hours of April 14, 2025, the crypto world staged a drama bloodier than Squid Game. OM—the token of the MANTRA chain and a flagship for the Real World Asset (RWA) narrative—executed a $5.5 billion “faith wipeout” in just 90 minutes. Within four hours, OM’s price plunged from $6.15 to a low of $0.37, a jaw-dropping 94% drop. Imagine throwing the Shanghai Tower off a cliff into the Huangpu River—while handing out leverage-buying tips to bystanders on the way down.

Shortly after, the project team casually issued a statement:

“Dear all, it’s all the exchange’s fault for those liquidations~ Our tokens are totally locked, okay~”

According to Coinglass, over $47.78 million in OM long positions and $18.01 million in shorts were liquidated within 12 hours.

What’s even more surreal? While retail investors were still fighting for life in the ICU, OM pulled off a “zombie bounce,” soaring from $0.37 to $1.20—liquidating another wave of short positions. Over $60 million in contracts were wiped out in just four hours.

Behind this textbook-level rug pull lies a uniquely “Chinese-style” extraction model—a cocktail of PUA-level persuasion, tokenomics trickery, and regulatory loopholes. Today, we’ll dissect this crypto version of The Big Short under the microscope, and see how retail investors are groomed into “self-sacrificing emotional fuel.”

Chapter 1: The Four-Act Rug Pull – From Cult Creation to Targeted Detonation

1.1 The Gilded Age: Dressing a Shitcoin in Armani

OM’s opening act was straight out of a blockchain version of The Wolf of Wall Street. The team hyped a triple-play narrative: “RWA + Middle Eastern whales + full regulatory compliance.” The pitch? Tokenizing Dubai luxury real estate in partnership with MAG, backed by Islamic finance principles.

It was like slapping a Michelin star on a greasy street-side pancake. Suddenly, petrodollars and institutional funds came flooding in.

But a look at the chain told a different story: TVL was only a few million dollars, yet its fully diluted valuation dared to touch $10 billion. That’s like using the daily sales of a county-level bubble tea shop to justify Starbucks’ market cap.

This “PPT-powered aircraft carrier” logic shows: in crypto, imagination is the ultimate productive force.

1.2 The Art of Market Control: How the Whales Played the Game

The real trick was in tokenomics. On-chain analyst @nihaovand revealed three major levers of control:

Staking Lock-up PUA: Offering 20% APY to make retail willingly handcuff themselves. Even miners refused to sell—an absurdity worthy of a new chapter in Das Kapital.

Deflation Illusion: Every transaction burned OM tokens, creating the illusion of growing scarcity, while the actual circulating supply was compressed to 88 million tokens.

Witch Hunt Airdrops: Fabricating fake wallets with 100 million OM to simulate demand—basically, The Truman Show in blockchain form.

The result? OM’s price chart was just a puppet on the whale’s strings. The 440x price surge in 2024 wasn’t a miracle—it was performance art: 90% of tokens controlled to pump for the remaining 10% of retail to chase.

1.3 Narrative Control: Stockholm Syndrome for Degens

On the eve of the crash, OM’s community was a full-blown MLM seminar. Shills were chanting, “OM is the pride of Chinese builders!” and “$2 today, $10 next week!”

The team knew exactly how to manipulate human nature:

Emotional Blackmail: Using crypto jargon like “big picture” and “shakeout” to build an echo chamber.

Technical Smoke Screens: RSI stayed in overbought territory for weeks, yet price refused to correct, creating an illusion of independence.

Regulatory Clout-Baiting: Every pump was linked to Bitcoin ETF news or “institutional overflow,” training retail into Pavlovian reflexes.

In this environment, any skepticism was labeled “low conviction.” The moment a trader starts quoting The Art of War to explain K-lines, liquidation isn’t far off.

1.4 The Death Waltz: Blood-Red at 2 A.M.

Striking at 2 a.m. Asia time showcased how perfectly the whales understood human behavior:

Liquidity Vacuum: U.S. institutions were asleep, Asian retail was offline, and exchange risk controls were basically MIA.

• Leverage Massacre: 97% of liquidations were long positions—proof the whales knew retail would “buy the dip” to the grave.

• Perfect Alibi: After the crash, the team blamed it all on exchange liquidations while ignoring large pre-dump transfers to OKX and Binance.

The ultimate genius? Using retail’s own money to liquidate their own positions. While you were staring at the chart at 2 a.m., dreaming of the bottom, the whales were using your margin to fuel their yachts.

Chapter 2: The Smoking Gun — On-Chain Data Doesn’t Lie

2.1 Wallets Don’t Speak, but the Data Screams

On-chain sleuths have pieced together a clear map of the rug pull:

Laser Digital: This investment firm transferred 1.7 million OM (worth $11.49M) to Binance just before the crash.

The Mysterious Whale: Wallet 0x9a…1a28 withdrew $40M in OM from Binance a month ago—then dumped $20M the night before the crash.

Staking Pool Anomaly: The StakedOM contract saw a sudden $5.84M withdrawal, precisely timed to the collapse.

These coordinated moves are more tightly scripted than a House of Cards plotline. The project team’s claim that “tokens are still locked” is like a thief saying, “I didn’t steal the money—it’s just still in my pocket.”

2.2 The Airdrop Trap: From Sweet Talk to Poison

OM’s airdrop strategy was a textbook case of psychological manipulation—what you might call the “Airdrop PUA Trilogy”:

Expectation Play: Early hype promised “20% unlocked at launch,” baiting 300,000 users into becoming free PR shills.

Rule Switch: Midway, the terms were changed to “10% upfront + 3-year linear vesting,” turning a free airdrop into a digital indenture.

Witch Hunt Cleanup: Accounts were frozen under the guise of “Sybil attacks,” when in reality, it was a purge of disobedient early users.

This three-part maneuver was masterfully executed: dangle hope, trap them in rules, then wipe them out. While you’re still calculating your annual yield, the team has already calculated your pain threshold.

Chapter 3: A Playground of Greed in the Regulatory Vacuum

3.1 The Exchanges’ Ambiguous Role

Binance founder CZ gave a textbook deflection: “CEXs shouldn’t decide what gets listed; users are responsible for their investments.” But here’s the inconvenient truth:

Liquidity Black Hole: 80% of OM’s daily trading volume happens on Binance and OKX—both listing contracts while knowing the project was team-controlled.

Risk Management Failure: Offering 500x leverage on tokens barely in the top 50 market cap is like handing gamblers a rocket launcher.

Symbiotic Profiteering: Listing fees + trading fees = exchanges become the fee-farming queens of the crypto casino.

This “referee-by-day, arms dealer-by-night” model turns the crypto market into Las Vegas—where the house always wins.

Conclusion: The Ultimate Crypto Paradox

OM’s crash wasn’t a bug—it was a feature. In this dark forest where “every altcoin eventually goes to zero,” the real crypto ethos isn’t betting on who runs fastest—it’s recognising the following truths:

Tech is innocent, but human nature is flawed: RWA was a revolutionary idea, until greed turned it into a harvesting machine.

Regulatory void ≠ freedom: Unchecked power always corrupts. An unregulated market will always breed scams.

Survival is the real win: When you hear your neighbor got rich trading shitcoins, remember there are 100 silent stories of bankruptcy behind that.

And finally, a golden rule for surviving crypto: Be fearful when others are greedy, and run when the team starts talking. After all, your belief is just fuel for the whales’ exit.

Disclaimer:

1. This article is reprinted from [MarsBit]. The copyright belongs to the original author [Lawrence, Mars Finance]. If you have any objections to the reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team. The team will handle it as soon as possible according to relevant procedures.

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