Movement Labs has suspended co-founder Rushi Manche as it continues to investigate a scandal involving one of its former market makers.
In a post on X dated May 2, Movement Labs confirmed Manche’s suspension as a third-party investigation by Groom Lake continues. The move came just hours after Coinbase announced it would suspend all Movement (MOVE) trading pairs starting May 15, citing failure to meet its listing standards.
While Coinbase did not explicitly cite manipulation, it had already shifted MOVE into limit-only mode ahead of the decision. The dispute stems from a token dump that occurred in December, during which a market maker allegedly sold 66 million MOVE tokens for an estimated profit of 38 million Tether (USDT).
In March, Binance reported the issue, freezing the money and notifying the Movement Foundation and Movement Labs. Rentech, the firm behind the dump, was falsely presented as affiliated with Web3Port. In reality, it appears to be an independent shell entity with no digital footprint.
According to leaked contracts, Rentech reportedly controlled more than 5% of MOVE’s entire supply, and the terms encouraged price inflation to a valuation $5 billion valuation prior to a planned sell-off.
To limit the damage, Movement Foundation ended its collaboration with the market maker and pledged a $38 million USDT buyback through a new reserve fund. The results of the independent investigation will establish whether Movement executives were directly involved in the scheme or were misled.
Currently trading at $0.19 and down over 20% in the past 24 hours, MOVE faces additional downside risk should support at $0.18 fail to hold. The MOVE/USDC chart shows a clear downtrend that began in late March. After a brief recovery, the token was rejected at the 20-day moving average, which is close to $0.24.
The price action is still below all of the major moving averages, and the relative strength index is near 32, suggesting that the bearish momentum is still present. The volume spike, which shows that traders are reacting strongly to the recent news, adds volatility to an already unstable chart. The project’s credibility now hinges on transparency and the results of the ongoing review.
