🔥Base on fire: Sinks 90% in 20 mins🤯

Hey, Explorers!

Welcome back to WhaleTales, your weekly digest on crypto's hottest stories. 

All is not well in the crypto frontier! 🫣💥

While China dumps confiscated crypto overseas to boost economic turbulence, the BASE token and Mantra’s OM underwent a historic 90% crash📉. However, there is some good news for Solana fans. The Solana Season 0 free game pass is now LIVE!

📬 In This Week’s Top News:

• Base on fire: Plummets 90% in 20 mins – What went wrong?

• China offloads seized crypto overseas amid the US trade rift

• Mantra OM token crashes a historic 90% overnight!

• Free Solana game pass Season 0 is LIVE – Get early access

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The Big Story

🔥Base on fire: Plummets 90% in 20 mins - What went wrong?🤯

Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 (L2) network built on the Ethereum blockchain, faces massive backlash as the much-hyped token takes a 90% plunge just 20 minutes after its launch.

On Wednesday, April 16, Base announced the launch of its token, BASE, stating “Base is for everyone” on X. The token price surged automatically within minutes and reached a peak of $17.1 million, bringing profits to 3 crypto wallets that bought the tokens before its official launch. However, the price hype was short-lived. The token price crashed dramatically by 90% within 20 minutes.

Base responds to the unprecedented crash:

Shortly after the catastrophic collapse, a Coinbase spokesperson posted that “Base did not launch a token.” The statement emphasized that posts on the Zora platform are automatically tokenized and do not signify an official launch.

Amid the ongoing public criticism, Base made a public disclaimer on Zora claiming that the L2 network will receive 10 million tokens out of its 1 billion token supply, which will be used for network development. It also warned users not to expect any profits during the developmental phase.

Base further added that the project was to bring creativity on-chain, and the network did not intend to sell the tokens.

BASE is slowly reviving, but the market remains skeptical:

Following its initial downfall, the BASE token made a partial recovery with a market cap of $9 million, but it is still receiving mixed reactions from market analysts and investors. While some slammed Coinbase for a bad publicity stunt, others stated the concept was good but was wrongly executed.

Abhishek Pawa, AP collective founder, said that:

A Lookonchain post made on X stated that 3 suspicious wallets held a majority of the “base is for everyone” on April 16 and made a collective profit of $666k. Furthermore, Moku co-founder and on-chain analyst Hantao Yuan shared in his X status that the 3 wallet holders controlled almost 47% of the BASE market supply and added that almost 2500 Base users were rug-pulled due to the sudden price crash.

Base founder Jesse Pollack defended his “content coin” and said it is a part of his crypto experiment, which will revolutionize meme coins and benefit the users in the long run.  

 In the Spotlight

💸China offloads seized crypto overseas amid the US trade rift 🌍

As if the U.S. government’s sweeping 245% tariff imposition was not dramatic enough, China now sells confiscated crypto overseas amid the trade rift and a sluggish economy.

Reuters report states that the Chinese local governments are offloading seized crypto overseas through private companies despite the country’s official ban on cryptocurrency trading since 2021. It is a strategic effort to liquidate the confiscated crypto assets into cash in offshore markets to boost the economy.

What led Chinese authorities to sell confiscated crypto abroad? 🤔

China currently holds around 194,000 units of BTC worth $16 billion, making it the second-largest $BTC holder just behind the U.S.

By 2023, the local Chinese governments held approximately 15,000 BTC worth around $1.4 billion.  

While trading crypto in China is illegal for individuals, it is a fair and legitimate practice for private companies to offload crypto on behalf of local governments through licensed offshore crypto exchanges.

Crypto-related illicit activities and money laundering have significantly surged in China. For example, in 2023, 378 billion yuan ($52 billion) was lost in crypto fraud, and last year it was estimated at around $59 billion, with over 3000 public prosecutions. This prompted the government to sell off seized crypto assets in offshore markets to replenish budget shortfalls.

💬...What do experts think?

Guo Zhihao, a senior lawyer based in Shenzhen, thinks the Chinese central bank is better equipped to deal with confiscated crypto. The country could sell crypto overseas or build a sovereign crypto reserve like Donald Trump plans to do in the U.S.

Crypto policymakers endorsed the proposal and suggested building a sovereign reserve in Hong Kong, where crypto trading is legalized.

The rising turbulence in the Chinese economy has gained significant attention during the U.S.-China trade rift. Experts view that China’s retaliatory response towards U.S. tariffs could have resulted in the devaluation of the Chinese yuan in the broader crypto market. 

Also Read

🚩🕉️ Mantra OM token crashes a historic 90% overnight

On Sunday, in a historic implosion, Mantra’s $OM token took a dramatic free-fall, collapsing from nearly $6 billion to below $0.4 billion, wiping nearly $5.4 billion in market value within 24 hours.

The sudden flash crash shocked the entire crypto community. Panic-driven investors took social media by storm and started drawing comparisons with the infamous “Terra Luna” collapse in 2022.

But what’s the real scoop? 🤔

The sudden crash of $OM was likely driven by a huge sell-off of $3.9 million by a whale wallet associated with the Mantra project on the OXX exchange.  

Immediately after the collapse, Mantra CEO John Patrick Mullin made a statement on X, and claimed that:

👉 Follow this link to read Mullin’s full official statement.

Mantra team denies a rug pull; blames forced liquidations

After the crash, Mantra’s team and CEO Mullin tried to clarify that the sudden pitfall was a result of “reckless forced liquidations” by centralized exchanges and not due to a rug pull or price manipulation.

However, industry experts have a different take on this! 🧐

In February this year, Mantra’s $OM reached an all-time high of $9.04, enticing investors to buy the coin. However, analysts believe that the $OM token price was hugely overhyped.

Inside reports have suggested several red flags. They believe that the Mantra team controls 90% of the token’s total circulating supply, leaving only about 10% free in the market. This allows Mantra to manipulate and artificially inflate the token prices. There were also speculations that $OM was privately sold to insiders at 50% off rates.

📌In short: The lack of transparency, inflated valuations, and significant insider ownership likely contributed to the OM token's downfall.

Read More: Mantra plans a strategic BURN program for OM token to earn public confidence and trust.

🎮✅Free Solana Game Pass Season 0 is LIVE – Get early access

Solana, one of the biggest web3 gaming ecosystems, is all set to launch its Season 0 game pass, a free NFT that will give players early access to games, in-game assets, NFTs, SOL, and rewards.

The play-to-earn (P2E) game is live, and for a limited time, early users can receive a free NFT Fame Pass.

The Solana P2E gaming ecosystem is known for its high speed, low transactional fees, and scalability. It can handle a wide network of active gamers without compromising quality, platform performance, and speed.

The 4-week Season 0 gaming campaign is part of its multi-season project that can be minted through Magid Eden, an NFT marketplace. Early birds holding free NFTs can complete quests to collect raffle tickets through Solana’s gaming partner GAM3S.GG, and earn prizes worth $15,000 and more.

💡Good To Know

What are Play2Earn games?

Play2Earn or P2E is an innovative blockchain-based gaming model that incentivizes participants to earn NFTs (non-fungible tokens), in-game assets, gaming tokens, cryptocurrencies, and other rewards for playing games.

Key takeaways:

• Players can exchange gaming rewards, like in-game assets and NFTs, for fiat currencies (dollars or EUD) and other crypto assets in the real world outside the game.

• Players gain true ownership of in-game assets through NFTs.

• These blockchain-based games are completely decentralized, secure, and transparent.

• P2E games are interoperable and can be accessed across multiple gaming platforms.

   

🌐 Market Map

The global crypto market cap on Sunday, 20^th April, is $2.75 trillion with🔻2.6% down over the last 24 hours.

 🍿Quick Bytes

• The official documentary “Vitalik: An Ethereum Story”, based on the life of Vitalik Buterin, Co-founder of Ethereum, is all set to launch on April 15, 2025. Coindesk.com

• A notable crypto tracking platform, “Whale Alert,” has detected a massive Bitcoin transaction worth 1,500 BTC, amounting to $126,947,543 between unidentified wallets. Tradingview.com

• Bitcoin rebounds to its peak at $87,600 on Monday, 21^st April, amid Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. Bloomberg.com

• SpacePay, a decentralized payment platform, is bridging the gap between crypto wallets and instant fiat payments at 0.5% fees. 99bitcoins.com

🤡 This Week’s Meme Drop 

That’s it for this week, guys!

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Disclaimer: The information provided in this newsletter is educational and not intended for any investment or financial advice. Crypto investments are risky. We encourage readers to invest wisely.