Coinage’s interview profiles Hedgeye digital assets analyst Ishmael Asad, who publicly warned that Mantra’s OM token was primed for a severe drawdown just three days before it lost roughly 90% of its value in a weekend, erasing about $5 billion in paper market cap. Asad had flagged structural red flags around OM’s tokenomics on social media, including a sharp increase in circulating and fully diluted supply that he believed was not reflected in the token’s rapid price appreciation to around $8–$9. When he raised his concerns directly with Mantra co‑founder JP Mullin, he says they were dismissed, only for a large liquidation and cascade of forced selling to trigger a violent repricing soon after. The Coinage piece situates the crash within Mantra’s rapid rise as a 2024 real‑world asset (RWA) lending and staking success story that migrated from Ethereum to its own Layer 1 chain, a move that effectively doubled OM’s supply and, in Asad’s view, made the token’s valuation far ahead of on‑chain fundamentals. Following the migration and subsequent leverage build‑up, a major liquidation event over a single weekend sent OM from about $8 to under $1, turning what had been framed as a high‑growth RWA platform into one of 2025’s largest failures almost overnight. The interview uses Mantra’s collapse as a case study in how opaque token supply changes, leverage, and aggressive growth narratives can mask mounting risk, and underscores the value of independent on‑chain and tokenomics analysis in a market where founders may publicly deny problems until after billions in notional value have evaporated.

AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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