Burn Them All!

Plus, 💸 ZKsync loses $5M, 🤐 MOVE co-founder goes quiet, 🇩🇪 Ethena exits Germany, ⛑️ Do markets need a ‘Trump put’?, and more!

Author

Juan Aranovich
April 16, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🔥 Mantra CEO pulls phoenix move after $5B crash

  • 📊 MOVE probes token dump 

  • 🔓 ZKsync hack mints $5M in tokens

  • ❌ Ethena shutters German operations

  • 🎧 The latest Bits + Bips episode: Wen Trump put?

The Financial Freedom Report explores the role currency and banking play in the civil liberties and human rights struggles of those living under authoritarian regimes and how Bitcoin is used to push back.

By Tikta

Mantra CEO John Mullin on Tuesday proposed burning his share of team tokens in an effort to restore the crypto community’s confidence in the project.

“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 said on X. 

Mantra’s OM token suffered a dramatic collapse last Sunday, plunging from around $6.30 to as low as $0.52, erasing more than $5.5 billion in market value.

Although Mullin blamed the crash on “reckless liquidations” on centralized exchanges during a period of low liquidity, social media was rife with speculation that insiders had played a role in the meltdown.

The Mantra team had an initial allocation of 300 million OM tokens, 16.88% of the total supply, which won’t be released to them until April 2027.

When Mullin was asked how many of those tokens had been allocated to him alone, he said “a fair few,” and vowed to share more details after he puts the “whole burn program together.”

Movement Labs and the Movement Network Foundation are conducting an internal and third-party investigation of recent "market maker abnormalities" related to the MOVE token, according to a report by Blockworks.

Sources said Movement co-founder Cooper Scanlon had announced that fellow co-founder Rushi Manche had taken a “temporary leave of absence.” 

Manche’s company Slack account was seemingly deactivated between Friday and Monday.  

The development comes after Binance’s removal of an unnamed market maker citing "improper conduct" involving the MOVE token, with the market maker allegedly having dumped 66 million MOVE tokens shortly after launch and placing minimal buy orders, resulting in a $38 million USDT profit.

ZKsync Loses $5M From Compromised Admin Wallet

Ethereum layer 2 protocol ZKsync confirmed on Tuesday that an admin account tied to its airdrop distribution contracts had been compromised, with a bad actor taking control of around $5 million of unclaimed tokens. 

The attacker used a function called sweepUnclaimed() to mint the 111 million unclaimed tokens, increasing the total ZK token supply by about 0.45%.

“Necessary security measures are being taken,” the ZKsync team said in a post on X. “All user funds are safe and have never been at risk. The ZKsync protocol and ZK token contract remained secure, and no further ZK is at risk.”

The ZK token saw a sharp 16% drop after the team disclosed the exploit, but had rebounded to $0.046 as of 3:40 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

Ethena Labs, the developer of synthetic stablecoin USDe, has agreed to wind down all of its operations in Germany following an agreement with the country’s financial regulator, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, a.k.a. BaFin.

This decision comes three weeks after BaFin identified "serious deficiencies" in the USDe stablecoin and alleged that Ethena was offering securities in Germany without the required approval.

“We have agreed with BaFin to wind down all activities of Ethena GMBH and will no longer be pursuing the [Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation] authorization in Germany,” Ethena Labs said on X. 

All of Ethena’s German users are now being onboarded to the synthetic dollar protocol’s entity in the British Virgin Islands. 

Ethena’s native token, ENA, was down 9.7% following the news, trading at $0.27 at 3:45 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

With liquidity vanishing and volatility soaring, is a “Trump put” intervention to stabilize markets the last resort?

Markets are nervous, liquidity is drying up, and political messaging is inconsistent at best.

In this week’s Bits + Bips, the crew unpacks the shifting mood across capital markets and what it will take to bring back risk-on energy. From President Donald Trump’s high-stakes tariff moves to whispers of deregulation, tax cuts, and even capital flooding, the stakes are rising.

Plus:

  • What would trigger a Trump put?

  • Will crypto benefit from the global chaos?

  • Will the devaluation of China’s yuan be a big moment?

  • And how might animal spirits return (if they’re properly incentivized)?

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

  • 🪙 Bo Hines, a former college football player who is now a crypto advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, said earlier this week that the administration was exploring tariffs as a way to fund its Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, aiming to acquire more BTC without burdening taxpayers following the March executive order establishing the reserve.

  • 🏥 Healthcare technology firm and bitcoin investor Semler Scientific this week reached a tentative $29.75 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over alleged fraud, securing a loan agreement with Coinbase backed by its bitcoin holdings and signaling readiness to resume BTC purchases.

  • 🇳🇬 Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, Tigran Gambaryan, recounted his eight-month detention in Nigeria, revealing near-death medical incidents and harsh conditions while facing money laundering charges amid the country’s demand that Binance pay an $81 billion fine.

  • ⚒️ Bitcoin miner CleanSpark abandoned its full HODL strategy and will now sell some mined BTC to avoid equity dilution, while expanding its Coinbase Prime credit facility to $200 million and targeting 50 EH/s in mining power.

  • 🇬🇧 BlackRock has officially been registered as a crypto asset firm by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, enabling it to operate its new iShares Bitcoin ETP in Europe.

  • 🌲 Treehouse Finance raised funds at a $400 million token valuation to scale its DeFi fixed-income platform, aiming to tap into the $600 trillion TradFi bond market.

  • 📈 Real-world asset tokenization firm Securitize acquired MG Stover’s fund administration unit, boosting its Securitize Fund Service platform to $38 billion of assets across 715 funds.