Hodler’s Digest, April 13 – 19 – Cointelegraph Magazine

Mantra CEO plans to burn team’s tokens in bid to win community trust

Mantra CEO John Mullin said he is planning to burn all of his team’s tokens in order to win back the trust of the network’s community following the sudden collapse of the Mantra (OM) token on April 13.

“I’m planning to burn all of my team tokens and when we turn it around the community and investors can decide if I have earned it back,” Mullin posted to X on April 16.

Mantra set aside 300 million OM, 16.88% of the token’s nearly 1.78 billion total supply, for its team and core contributors. They are currently locked and were scheduled to be released in stages between April 2027 and October 2029, according to an April 8 blog post.

Oregon targets Coinbase after SEC drops its federal lawsuit

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield is planning a lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase, alleging the company is selling unregistered securities to residents of the US state, after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) dropped its federal case against the exchange. 

According to Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, the lawsuit is an exact “copycat case” of SEC’s 2023 lawsuit against the exchange, which the federal agency agreed to drop in February. Grewal added:

“In case you think I’m jumping to conclusions, the attorney general’s office made it clear to us that they are literally picking up where the Gary Gensler SEC left off — seriously. This is exactly the opposite of what Americans should be focused on right now.”

TRUMP tokenholders face 90% decline from peak as unlock begins

TRUMP tokenholders face steep losses as the first vesting unlock goes live on April 18, releasing 40 million tokens, worth roughly $309 million, into circulation at a 90% discount from its peak. 

The unlocked tokens account for 20% of the current circulating supply and could introduce fresh volatility as a previously illiquid portion of the supply hits the market. According to CoinGecko, the TRUMP token price has fluctuated between $7.46 and $7.83 in the past 24 hours. 

April 18 marks the first unlock event for the TRUMP token, with steady, smaller unlocks following from that date.

Crypto rug pulls have slowed, but are now more devastating: DappRadar

There has been a 66% year-on-year decrease in the number of crypto rug pulls this year compared to 2024, but recent data shows the size of each rug pull has been increasing. 

Rug pulls have dropped in frequency year-over-year, with early 2024 recording 21 separate incidents, compared to only seven so far in 2025, according to an April 16 report from blockchain analytics platform DappRadar.

However, since the beginning of 2025, the Web3 ecosystem has lost nearly $6 billion to rug pulls, according to DappRadar’s report. However, the report attributes 92% of that to Mantra’s OM token collapse, which the founders have strongly denied was a rug pull.

In comparison, during the same period in early 2024, three months into the year, total losses from rug pulls hit $90 million.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s latest California prison once housed Al Capone

Former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried has moved from a transit facility to a California prison that once housed infamous gangster Al Capone.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, officials moved Bankman-Fried from the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City briefly to the Federal Correctional Institution in Victorville before transferring him to a facility in Terminal Island in Los Angeles, California. 

The federal institution was once home to criminals like former Theranos chief operating officer Ramesh Balwani and Capone, who was convicted of tax evasion in 1931.

OpenAI is building ‘X-like social network’ to rival Elon Musk — Report

Large language model developer OpenAI is reportedly working on a new social media network, putting the company on a collision course with Elon Musk’s X and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms.

Citing anonymous sources, The Verge reported on April 15 that OpenAI is developing an “X-like social network” that combines ChatGPT’s image generation tools and a social feed, presumably to allow users to share their AI-generated pictures with a broader audience. 

It’s unclear whether OpenAI will spin out a new social media platform or roll the features into ChatGPT, the sources said.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $84,513, Ether (ETH) at $1,592 and XRP at $2.07. The total market cap is at $2.63 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Raydium (RAY) at 21.17%, Helium (HNT) at 17.43% and Core (CORE) at 13.14%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Mantra (OM) at 89.93%, Movement (MOVE) at 28.58% and AB (AB) at 20.31%. For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough.”

Donald Trump, US President

“The ETFs and Saylor have been buying up all ‘dumps’ from the tourists, FTX refugees, GBTC discounters, legal unlocks, govt confiscations and Lord knows who else.”

Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg

“I was using Bitcoin to make a bunch of those investments, and you would think, if you invested in Coinbase you would have done really well. Had I just held the Bitcoin, I actually would have done better than making those investments.”

Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group

“I’m planning to burn all of my team tokens and when we turn it around the community and investors can decide if I have earned it back.”

JP Mullin, co-founder and CEO of Mantra

“When the sentiment finally resets, it’s likely to happen rather quickly and we remain constructive for the second half of 2025.“

Coinbase researchers

“We have actually received quite a number of approaches by a few governments and sovereign wealth funds on the establishment of their own crypto reserves.”

Richard Teng, CEO of Binance

Prediction of The Week

Altcoins may rally in Q2 2025 thanks to improved regulations: Sygnum

Altcoins may see a resurgence in the second quarter of 2025 as regulations for digital assets continue to improve, according to Swiss bank Sygnum.

In its Q2 2025 investment outlook, Sygnum said the space has seen “drastically improved” regulations for crypto use cases, creating the foundations for a strong alt-sector rally for the second quarter. However, it added that “none of the positive developments have been priced in.” 

In April, Bitcoin dominance reached a four-year high, signaling that crypto investors are rotating their funds into an asset perceived to be relatively safer. 

FUD of The Week

Hacker mints $5M in ZK tokens after compromising ZKsync admin account

A hacker compromised a ZKsync admin account on April 15, minting $5 million worth of unclaimed airdrop tokens, according to a statement from the official ZKsync X account. The attack was described as isolated, with no user funds affected.

Following an investigation, ZKsync detailed the incident on April 15, disclosing that the compromised account had administrative control over three airdrop distribution contracts. The attacker exploited a function called sweepUnclaimed() to mint 111 million unclaimed ZK tokens, increasing the total token supply by 0.45%. As of the latest update, the attacker still held control of most of the stolen funds.

Only 11% of El Salvador’s registered Bitcoin firms operational

Only 20 of the 181 Bitcoin service providers registered with El Salvador’s central bank are operational, with the rest failing to meet the country’s requirements under its Bitcoin Law. 

Local media outlet El Mundo cited data from the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, showing that 11% of the service providers are operational. According to the central bank’s database, the rest of the providers are classified as non-operational. 

The data showed that at least 22 non-operational providers have failed to meet most of the country’s Bitcoin Law requirements, which mandate that providers implement stringent supervision of their financial systems. 

ENS founder warns of Google spoof that tricks users with a fake subpoena

The founder and lead developer of Ethereum Name Service has warned his X followers of an “extremely sophisticated” phishing attack that can impersonate Google and trick users into giving out login credentials. 

The phishing attack exploits Google’s infrastructure to send a fake alert to users informing them that their Google data is being shared with law enforcement due to a subpoena, ENS’ Nick Johnson said in an April 16 post to X. 

“It passes the DKIM signature check, and GMail displays it without any warnings – it even puts it in the same conversation as other, legitimate security alerts,” he said. 

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