MANTRA Token Crashes 18% as Chain Halts; Bitcoin Miners Spend $5B on AI

MANTRA's native token sank 18.5% to a record low of $0.004126 on Thursday before the MANTRA Chain team announced a precautionary halt over an unexplained incident. According to CoinGecko data, the token dropped from its 24-hour high of $0.005060 around 11:00 pm UTC, later recovering modestly to roughly $0.0044 while trading volume surged nearly 600% to $24 million. The team confirmed it was "aware of an incident affecting MANTRA Chain" and froze all endpoints and transactions pending investigation, stating it had no root cause or timeline to share. The halt has already forced affected exchanges to suspend deposits and withdrawals, with no restoration timeline disclosed.

Bitcoin miners are accelerating their pivot into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, spending more than $5 billion in the first half of 2026 while generating only $341.2 million in revenue from those operations. Figures from BlocksBridge Consulting show nine comparable public miners spending roughly $15 on capital assets for every $1 of AI and HPC revenue. Across a broader group of 15 Bitcoin miners and AI data-center companies, capital expenditure hit $30.7 billion in their latest reporting periods, already surpassing full-year 2025 spending by 42.6%. AI and HPC revenue is trending upward, however, with the nine miners producing $205.8 million in the second quarter, a 52% increase from the previous quarter. Core Scientific, TeraWulf and Bitdeer were among those reporting growth, though BlocksBridge notes that converting mining infrastructure into AI-ready facilities still demands major investment in substations, cooling, networking and GPUs.

In security news, a newly uncovered phishing operation reportedly targeted approximately 885,000 phone numbers worldwide, highlighting the growing intersection between traditional telecom fraud and crypto-related cybercrime. Details on the specific threat actor and methodology were still emerging as of publication.