Movement Labs has suspended its co-founder, Rushi Manche, amid an ongoing investigation into a market manipulation scandal involving one of its former market makers. This announcement came on May 2, 2025, as the company works with Groom Lake, a third-party firm, to thoroughly investigate the incident.
The controversy centres on a December token dump, where a market maker allegedly sold approximately 66 million MOVE tokens, netting an estimated 38 million USDT (Tether) in profits. This event triggered alarm bells across the crypto community, prompting Binance to freeze the suspicious funds in March and notify Movement Labs and the Movement Foundation.
Further scrutiny revealed that the entity behind the dump, Rentech, was misrepresented as affiliated with Web3Port. Rentech appears to be an independent shell company with no digital footprint. Leaked contracts indicate that Rentech controlled over 5% of MOVE’s total supply, with terms allegedly encouraging inflating the token’s price to a $5 billion valuation before executing a planned sell-off.
Coinbase responded swiftly by announcing it would delist all MOVE trading pairs starting May 15, citing the token’s failure to meet its listing standards. Before this, Coinbase had already restricted MOVE to limit-only trading, signalling growing concerns about the token’s integrity. Although Coinbase did not explicitly accuse Movement Labs of manipulation, the delisting decision significantly affected market confidence.
Following the news, MOVE’s price dropped over 20% within 24 hours, currently trading around $0.19. Technical analysis reveals a clear downtrend since late March, with the token struggling to break above the 20-day moving average near $0.24. The relative strength index (RSI) is near 32, indicating persistent bearish momentum. A spike in trading volume further adds to the token’s volatility.
Notably, Movement Labs recently launched its Movement Network Public Mainnet Beta, achieving over $250 million in Total Value Locked. Key features include permissionless smart contract deployment and unique Ethereum settlement for enhanced DeFi security and scalability.
If you want to read more news articles like this, visit DeFi Planet and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and CoinMarketCap Community.
“Take control of your crypto portfolio with MARKETS PRO, DeFi Planet’s suite of analytics tools.”
