Pi Network has recently witnessed a 12% price rally, briefly reaching $0.65 during intra-day trading, only to fall back down to $0.61. Despite this uptick, the altcoin has struggled to break free from consolidation, as weak investor sentiment continues to weigh heavily on its price.
A glimmer of hope comes from an ecosystem announcement scheduled for May 14, which could offer some positive news and potentially trigger a more substantial rally.
Pi Network Is Losing Investor Interest
Investor sentiment surrounding Pi Network has been weak for the past month, with little to no interest from the broader market. This lack of enthusiasm has hindered the altcoin’s ability to break free from consolidation and achieve a sustained price increase.
This investor apathy has created a significant challenge for Pi Network, as it lacks the backing needed to push its price higher. While the market has shown some bullish tendencies, especially following the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates unchanged, Pi Network has struggled to translate this into sustained momentum.
The overall macro momentum of Pi Network shows mixed signals. On the one hand, the MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence) indicator barely exhibits bullishness, with the histogram showing small green bars. While this suggests slight positive momentum, it is not enough to trigger a rally.
This indicates that the market’s broader bullish cues are preventing a bearish crossover, helping to keep Pi Network’s price afloat despite investor hesitation. However, the lack of strong bullish signals from the MACD means that Pi Network is still struggling to gain significant upward traction.
Pi Network’s price grew by 12% over the last 24 hours, briefly reaching $0.65 before falling back to $0.61. This uptick was fueled by broader market bullishness following the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates unchanged. However, the altcoin has struggled to maintain its gains, indicating a lack of strong support from investors to push the price higher.
Pi Network continues to consolidate, stuck between $0.61 and $0.57. This ongoing range-bound movement suggests that the altcoin lacks sufficient momentum to break out of its consolidation phase. The price will likely continue moving within this range unless both market and investor support are bolstered, which remains uncertain at this point.
On the other hand, Pi Network could invalidate the bearish outlook if it secures $0.61 as support and begins to rise towards $0.71. Successfully breaching $0.71 could instill confidence in investors, potentially triggering a more substantial rally. However, without a clear shift in sentiment, the price may continue to struggle.
The collapse of the MANTRA (OM) token has left investors reeling, with many facing significant losses. As analysts comb through the causes of the collapse, many questions remain.
BeInCrypto consulted industry experts to identify five critical red flags behind MANTRA’s downfall and reveal strategies investors can adopt to steer clear of similar pitfalls in the future.
MANTRA (OM) Crash: What Investors Missed and How to Avoid Future Losses
On April 13, BeInCrypto broke the news of OM’s 90% crash. The collapse raised several concerns, with investors accusing the team of orchestrating a pump-and-dump scheme. Experts believe that there were many early signs of trouble.
In addition, the project adopted an inflationary tokenomic model with an uncapped supply, replacing the previous hard cap. As part of this transition, the total token supply was also increased to 1.7 billion.
However, the move wasn’t without drawbacks. According to Jean Rausis, co-founder of SMARDEX, tokenomics was a point of concern in the OM collapse.
“The project doubled its token supply to 1.77 billion in 2024 and shifted to an inflationary model, which diluted its original holders. Complex vesting favored insiders, while low circulating supply and massive FDV fueled hype and price manipulation,” Jean Rausis told BeInCrypto.
Moreover, the team’s control over the OM supply also raised centralization concerns. Experts believe this was also a factor that could have led to the alleged price manipulation.
“About 90% of OM tokens were held by the team, indicating a high level of centralization that could potentially lead to manipulation. The team also maintained control over governance, which undermined the project’s decentralized nature,” said Phil Fogel, co-founder of Cork.
Phil Fogel acknowledged that a concentrated token supply isn’t always a red flag. However, it’s crucial for investors to know who holds large amounts, their lock-up terms, and whether their involvement aligns with the project’s decentralization goals.
Moreover, Ming Wu, the founder of RabbitX, also argued that analyzing this data is essential to uncover any potential risks that could undermine the project in the long term.
“Tools like bubble maps can help identify potential risks related to token distribution,” Wu advised.
2. OM Price Action
2025 has been marked as the year of significant market volatility. The broader macroeconomic pressures have weighed heavily on the market, with the majority of the coins experiencing steep losses. Yet, OM’s price action was relatively stable until the latest crash.
OM vs. TOTAL Market Performance. Source: TradingView
“The biggest red flag was simply the price action. The whole market was going down, and nobody cared about MANTRA, and yet its token price somehow kept pumping in unnatural patterns – pump, flat, pump, flat again,” Jean Rausis disclosed.
He added that this was a clear sign of a potential issue or problem with the project. Nevertheless, he noted that identifying the differentiating price action would require some technical analysis know-how. Thus, investors lacking the knowledge would have easily missed it.
Despite this, Rausis highlighted that even the untrained eye could find other signs that something was off, ultimately leading to the crash.
Strategies to Protect Yourself
While investors remained optimistic about OM’s resilience amid a market downturn, this ended up costing them millions. Eric He, LBank’s Community Angel Officer, and Risk Control Adviser emphasized the importance of proactive risk management to avoid OM-style collapses.
“First, diversification is key—spreading capital across projects limits single-token exposure. Stop-loss triggers (e.g., 10-20% below buy price) can automate damage control in volatile conditions,” Eric shared with BeInCrypto.
Ming Wu had a similar perspective, emphasizing the importance of avoiding over-allocation to a single token. The executive explained that a diversified investment strategy helps mitigate risk and enhances overall portfolio stability.
“Investors can use perpetual futures as a risk management tool to hedge against potential price declines in their holdings,” Wu remarked.
Meanwhile, Phil Fogel advised focusing on a token’s liquidity. Key factors include the float size, price sensitivity to sell orders, and who can significantly impact the market.
3. Project Fundamentals
Experts also highlighted major discrepancies in MANTRA’s TVL. Eric He pointed out a significant gap between the token’s fully diluted valuation (FDV) and the TVL. OM’s FDV reached $9.5 billion, while its TVL was only $13 million, indicating a potential overvaluation.
“A $9.5 billion valuation against $13 million TVL, screamed instability,” Forest Bai, co-founder of Foresight Ventures, stated.
Notably, several issues were also raised regarding the airdrop. Jean Rausis called the airdrop a “mess.” He cited many issues, including delays, frequent changes to eligibility rules, and the disqualification of half the participants. Meanwhile, suspected bots were not removed.
“The airdrop disproportionately favored insiders while excluding genuine supporters, reflecting a lack of fairness,” Phil Fogel reiterated.
The criticism expanded further as Fogel pointed out the team’s alleged associations with questionable entities and ties to questionable initial coin offerings (ICOs), raising doubts about the project’s credibility. Eric He also suggested that MANTRA was allegedly tied to gambling platforms in the past.
Strategies to Protect Yourself
Forest Bai underscored the importance of verifying the project team’s credentials, reviewing the project roadmap, and monitoring on-chain activity to ensure transparency. He also advised investors to assess community engagement and regulatory compliance to gauge the project’s long-term viability.
Ming Wu also stressed distinguishing between real growth and artificially inflated metrics.
“It’s important to differentiate real growth from activity that’s artificially inflated through incentives or airdrops, unsustainable tactics like ‘selling a dollar for 90 cents’ may generate short-term metrics but don’t reflect actual engagement,” Wu informed BeInCrypto.
Finally, Wu recommended researching the background of the project’s team members to uncover any history of fraudulent activity or involvement in questionable ventures. This would ensure that investors are well-informed before committing to any project.
4. Whale Movements
As BeInCrypto reported earlier, before the crash, a whale wallet reportedly associated with the MANTRA team deposited 3.9 million OM tokens into the OKX exchange. Experts highlighted that this wasn’t an isolated incident.
“Large OM transfers (43.6 million tokens, ~$227 million) to exchanges days prior were a major warning of potential sell-offs,” Forest Bai conveyed to BeInCrypto.
Ming Wu also explained that investors should pay close attention to such large transfers, which often act as warning signals. Moreover, analysts at CryptoQuant also outlined what investors should look out for.
“OM transfers into exchanges amounted to as much as $35 million in just an hour. This represented an alert sign as: Transfers into exchanges are below $8 million in a typical hour (excluding transfers into Binance, which are typically large given the size of the exchange). Transfers into exchanges represented more than a third of the total OM transferred, which indicates a high transfer volume into exchanges,” CryptoQuant informed BeInCrypto.
Strategies to Protect Yourself
CryptoQuant stated that investors need to monitor the flows of any token into exchanges, as it could indicate increasing price volatility in the near future.
Meanwhile, Risk Control Adviser Eric He outlined four strategies to stay up-to-date when it comes to large transfers.
Chain Sleuthing: Tools like Arkham and Nansen allow investors to track large transfers and monitor wallet activity.
Set Alerts: Platforms like Etherscan and Glassnode notify investors of unusual market movements.
Track Exchange Flows: Users need to track large flows into centralized exchanges.
Check Lockups: Dune Analytics helps investors determine if team tokens are being released earlier than expected.
He also recommended focusing on the market structure.
“OM’s crash proved market depth is non-negotiable: Kaiko data showed 1% order book depth collapsed 74% before the fall. Always check liquidity metrics on platforms like Kaiko; if 1% depth is below $500,000, that’s a red flag,” Eric revealed to BeInCrypto.
Additionally, Phil Fogel underlined the importance of monitoring platforms like X (formerly Twitter) for any rumors or discussions about possible dumps. He stressed the need to analyze liquidity to assess whether a token can handle sell pressure without causing a significant price drop.
Interestingly, experts were slightly divided on how CEXs contributed to OM’s crash. Forest Bai claimed that CEX liquidations during low-liquidity hours worsened the crash by triggering cascading sell-offs. Eric He corroborated this sentiment.
“CEX liquidations played a major role in the OM crash, acting as an accelerant. With thin liquidity—1% depth falling from $600,000 to $147,000—forced closures triggered cascading liquidations. Over $74.7 million was wiped in 24 hours,” he mentioned.
“Analyzing the open interest in the OM derivatives market reveals that it was less than 0.1% of OM’s market capitalization. However, what’s particularly interesting is that during the market collapse, open interest in OM derivatives actually increased by 90%,” Wu expressed to BeInCrypto.
According to the executive, this challenges the idea that liquidations or forced closures caused the price drop. Instead, it indicates that traders and investors increased their short positions as the price fell.
Strategies to Protect Yourself
While the involvement of CEXs remains debatable, the experts did address the key point of investor protection.
“Investors can limit leverage to avoid forced liquidations, choose platforms with transparent risk policies, monitor open interest for liquidation risks, and hold tokens in self-custody wallets to reduce CEX exposure,” Forest Bai recommended.
Eric He also advised that investors should mitigate risks by adjusting leverage dynamically based on volatility. If tools like ATR or Bollinger Bands signal turbulence, exposure should be reduced.
The MANTRA (OM) collapse is a powerful reminder of the importance of due diligence and risk management in cryptocurrency investments. Investors can minimize the risk of falling into similar traps by carefully assessing tokenomics, monitoring on-chain data, and diversifying investments.
With expert insights, these strategies will help guide investors toward smarter, more secure decisions in the crypto market.
Welcome to the US Morning Crypto News Briefing—your essential rundown of the most important developments in crypto for the day ahead.
Grab a coffee to see what experts say about Bitcoin’s (BTC) price amid recovery efforts. The status of Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty is progressively becoming questionable, with institutional influence adding to the concerns.
Can Strategy’s $555 Million BTC Purchase Send Bitcoin Past $90,000?
Michael Saylor, the chairman of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), revealed the firm’s latest Bitcoin purchase, comprising 6,556 BTC tokens worth approximately $555.8 million. With this, the firm has attained a Bitcoin yield of 12.1% year-to-date (YTD) in 2025.
“MSTR has acquired 6,556 BTC for ~$555.8 million at ~$84,785 per bitcoin and has achieved BTC Yield of 12.1% YTD 2025. As of 4/20/2025, Strategy holds 538,200 BTC acquired for ~$36.47 billion at ~$67,766 per bitcoin,” Saylor shared.
Strategy uses the Bitcoin Yield YTD to measure the BTC holdings per share increase. This model has been a key part of their financial strategy firm since their first Bitcoin purchase in August 2020.
This acquisition aligns with a bullish market sentiment for Bitcoin, which is steadily nearing the $90,000 milestone, as the recent US Crypto News indicated.
Despite a mild recovery in Bitcoin prices this week, up by over 3% in the last 24 hours, it is worth noting that Bitcoin is highly sensitive to economic indicators.
Similarly, the global market is highly sensitive to monetary policies set by major economies, particularly the US. BeInCrypto contacted Paybis founder and CEO Innokenty Isers for insights on the current market outlook, particularly for Bitcoin.
“Given the strong concentration of investors in technology stocks, shifts in trade policies and government interventions that influence key indices like the Nasdaq Composite create ripple effects across financial markets,” Isers told BeInCrypto.
“With its relatively higher volatility, risk-averse investors may favor alternative inflation hedges instead of Bitcoin,” he added.
Iners expressed cognizance of the longer stretch of the trade war and the potential inflation that will emerge. Based on this, he noted that capital allocation to Bitcoin as a hedge against economic instability might be reduced.
Strategy’s Stock Premium Narrows as Bitcoin Hype Cools
Meanwhile, Strategy has seen a significant shift in its stock valuation dynamics over the past year. Saylor recently revealed that as of Q1 2025, over 13,000 institutions and 814,000 retail accounts held MSTR directly.
“An estimated 55 million beneficiaries have indirect exposure through ETFs, mutual funds, pensions, and insurance portfolios,” Saylor added.
According to data on Bitcointreasuries.net, the premium investors once paid for exposure to its Bitcoin holdings has notably narrowed.
Specifically, the NAV multiplier, a measure of how much the stock trades above the value of Strategy’s Bitcoin assets, has decreased compared to last year. This indicates that MSTR is now trading closer to the actual value of its Bitcoin reserves.
In 2024, investors were willing to pay a substantial premium for MSTR shares, driven by Bitcoin’s hype and MicroStrategy’s aggressive accumulation strategy.
“I don’t know if buying strategy equity is a good idea for the government. The stock would just pump, and it’s likely trading at a premium over NAV with a higher risk profile. Also, I believe the gov will find it difficult to find institutions that would be willing to sell their BTC in large quantities,” an analyst said recently.
The shrinking NAV multiplier suggests a more cautious market sentiment. Analysts believe this reflects a shift toward valuing MicroStrategy based on its fundamentals rather than speculative Bitcoin enthusiasm.
This suggests a maturing market approach to the company’s unique investment strategy.
This chart shows how Strategy’s stock price (blue) moves with Bitcoin price (orange). When Bitcoin goes up, MicroStrategy usually follows, but it swings even more.
However, the NAV multiplier has narrowed compared to last year, meaning MicroStrategy’s stock is now trading closer to the actual value of its Bitcoin holdings.
Last year, investors paid a bigger premium for exposure to MSTR, but that gap has shrunk. This suggests a more cautious sentiment or a shift toward valuing the company based on fundamentals rather than just Bitcoin hype.
Accumulation signals from whale activity and consolidation at $0.60 indicate a possible rally for Pi Network, despite concerns about the lack of exchange listings and use cases.
