On Monday, March 24, WLFI, a DeFi project backed by President Donald Trump’s family, purchased about 3.54 million MNT for nearly $3 million USDC for an average purchase price of 84 cents, according to data sources Lookonchain and Arkham Intelligence.The latest purchase has increased WLFI’s MNT holdings to 5.99 million tokens, worth around $5.06 million at press time, while bringing its total crypto holdings, which include tokens like ETH, WBTC, TRX, LINK, AAVE, ENA, and others, to over $81.8 million.MNT powers the Mantle Network, a Layer 2 solution built to scale Ethereum more efficiently. It’s used for paying gas fees and participating in governance decisions.Following WLFI’s buy, Mantle Mantle
mnt
7.67%
Mantle jumped 8.5% intraday to hit $0.849, with its market cap climbing past $2.83 billion. Trading volume also surged, up 66% to around $123 million, signaling renewed investor interest in the token.Interestingly, today’s MNT rally marked a breakout from the short-term downtrend it had been stuck in since March 17. Back then, the token was trading around $0.838 before hitting a local bottom at $0.775 on March 21, just days after the Mantle Mainnet hard fork on March 19. The upgrade marked the integration of EigenDA, a decentralized data availability layer that helps the network handle more traffic by allowing more transactions in each block. On top of that, it also helps Mantle work more smoothly with Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade.Another development that’s drawing in traders is the Mantle Surge campaign, a joint initiative between Mantle and crypto exchange Bybit, featuring a 1 million MNT prize pool for participants who engage with various projects across the Mantle ecosystem.
Recent developments have been well received by the MNT community, while a number of analysts see the potential for more gains in the short term.According to one analyst, MNT could rally past $0.90 soon as long as it holds above the key psychological support level of $0.80.
Meanwhile, fellow trader Lazy Chart Guy pointed to recent developments as “bullish” for MNT price, which he believes has hit a “short-term low” after completing a deep 78.6% Fibonacci retracement.