Price manipulation rising amid Mantra, Story Protocol crashes

Arthur Cheong, the founder of Defiance Capital, warned against the growing manipulation of cryptocurrency prices, describing the trend as a serious danger for the confidence of investors in the middle of the mantra and the accidents of the history token.

In an article on April 14 on X, Cheong warned that market projects and manufacturers are working more and more together to artificially keep prices in chips, creating a market where “you do not know if the price is the result of demand and organic supply” or coordinated manipulation.

He continued by saying that centralized exchanges ignore the problem, creating what he called a “lemon market”, in which initiates take advantage while investors present the risk. Cheong has also noted that the majority of recent token generation events have poorly performed, the prices lowering from 70 to 90% after registration.

Due to the widespread manipulation of prices, Cheong has reached the conclusion that a large part of the cryptocurrency market will remain “useless” unless the industry fixes these structural defects.

Cheong’s post intervenes after the mantra (If) The token lost 90% of its value in less than 24 hours, destroying more than $ 5 billion in market capitalization. Independent crypto analysts stressed that Mantra had moved millions of OM tokens to OKX just before the price accident, although Mantra denied these claims.

With 90% of the team’s offer by the team, many believe that it was a case of sale of initiates disguised as a market event. Mantra CEO denied any reprehensible act, blaming the accident on Cex liquidation.

The concerns did not stop with the Mantra. As the drama of the mantra took place, the history protocols (IP) token abandoned 25% in one hour, from $ 4.24 to $ 3.02 before partially recover. Once again, Binance and OKX, the same exchanges connected to the OM crash, represented the majority of the volume of trading.

Binance suggested that the accident was caused by forced liquidations, while OKX stressed the tokenomic changes and suspicious exchange deposits. The contradictory statements have added to speculation on manipulation.

Meanwhile, manipulation has spread to decentralized markets. Last month, a hyperliquid merchant opened a short of $ 5 million on the jelly token, then self-liquidated by the position by pumping the price of the chain token, leading the hyperliquidal safe to absorb the loss.

In an analysis shared with Crypto.News, Dr Jan Philipp Fritsche of Oak Security describe It is “a case of risk manual of Vega not taken”, showing how the vulnerabilities of the DEFI design can always be exploited even without technical bugs.