Crypto devs accused of rug pull blame Iran draft for abandoning project

headline, crypto devs accused of rug pull blame Iran draft for abandoning project published at

7.46 pm March 5, 2026. AI firm mantra finance claims that the entire team behind its recently

launched mantra token has been drafted to fight in the war against the US and Israel.

And as a result, it has been forced to abandon the project. The firm made the announcement via

X on Wednesday and the account was later deleted. The mantra finance website now displays a

404 error page. Mantra's market cap subsequently dropped 80 percent from $100,000 to roughly

$20,000 and the project's volume across the last six hours was just $1,200.

Mantra pitched itself as autonomous, quant trading on base and launched its token on February 25th.

It reached a market cap of $700,000 by the following day but performed poorly from then on.

All this has led many to believe that the project was nothing more than a creative rug pull

or exit scam. Read more. Zarebrow founder Jeffey Yu has allegedly killed himself again.

One crypto user said having a hard time deciding whether this or the dev that died and came back

alive and died again was a better rug excuse. Another noted that the website was vibe coded using

the lovable AI coding website. What would you expect? Lul, they added. One potential investor noted

days ago that the mantra finance site wouldn't let them connect their wallet and that they

need further validation to invest sketchy for now. The mantra team appeared to be taking advantage

of the ongoing US Israel war against Iran, which has now entered its sixth day. The conflict has

led to a surge of outflows from Iran's biggest crypto exchange, Nobatex, and caused a flurry of

bets on prediction platform polymarket that have raised insider trading red flags. Got a tip?

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