Movement Labs Secretly Promised Advisers Millions in Tokens, Leaked Documents Show
The post Movement Labs Secretly Promised Advisers Millions in Tokens, Leaked Documents Show appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. Movement Labs, the scandal-plagued crypto startup backed by Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial, quietly promised large stakes of its token to early insiders—undisclosed deals that now raise fresh questions about who really holds power behind the scenes. Even before its token launch, Movement Labs committed large portions of MOVE’s supply to a handful of early advisers — arrangements that were never disclosed to investors and only surfaced through internal documents reviewed by CoinDesk. Two business memos obtained by CoinDesk — one promising a single adviser nearly $2 million a year — show how Movement, founded in 2023 by two 20-year-old Vanderbilt dropouts, leaned heavily on these advisers to gain a foothold in the crypto industry. Movement Labs said the agreements, dated shortly after the project’s founding, were exploratory in nature and non-binding. The existence of the agreements nonetheless casts new light on the chaotic inner workings of Movement, which came under fire after CoinDesk reported last month that insider market-making deals enabled token dumping by insiders. The fallout has sparked waves of finger-pointing inside the company, centering on who steered Movement into a predatory agreement with a Chinese market maker under terms that analysts say incentivized predatory selling. The tension has boiled over into a public rift between co-founders Rushi Manche, who was terminated by Movement Labs this month, and Cooper Scanlon, who stepped back from his CEO role but remains at the company. “When we started Movement, I was the CTO — leading the engineering team. I left most business decisions, including the contracts, to Cooper,” Manche told CoinDesk when reached for comment. “When priorities changed, our roles changed, but Cooper’s decisions in the early days heavily shaped the way the launch went.” Shadow advisers CoinDesk spoke to more than a dozen people familiar with Movement over the course…
The post Movement Labs Secretly Promised Advisers Millions in Tokens, Leaked Documents Show appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
Movement Labs, the scandal-plagued crypto startup backed by Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial, quietly promised large stakes of its token to early insiders—undisclosed deals that now raise fresh questions about who really holds power behind the scenes. Even before its token launch, Movement Labs committed large portions of MOVE’s supply to a handful of early advisers — arrangements that were never disclosed to investors and only surfaced through internal documents reviewed by CoinDesk. Two business memos obtained by CoinDesk — one promising a single adviser nearly $2 million a year — show how Movement, founded in 2023 by two 20-year-old Vanderbilt dropouts, leaned heavily on these advisers to gain a foothold in the crypto industry. Movement Labs said the agreements, dated shortly after the project’s founding, were exploratory in nature and non-binding. The existence of the agreements nonetheless casts new light on the chaotic inner workings of Movement, which came under fire after CoinDesk reported last month that insider market-making deals enabled token dumping by insiders. The fallout has sparked waves of finger-pointing inside the company, centering on who steered Movement into a predatory agreement with a Chinese market maker under terms that analysts say incentivized predatory selling. The tension has boiled over into a public rift between co-founders Rushi Manche, who was terminated by Movement Labs this month, and Cooper Scanlon, who stepped back from his CEO role but remains at the company. “When we started Movement, I was the CTO — leading the engineering team. I left most business decisions, including the contracts, to Cooper,” Manche told CoinDesk when reached for comment. “When priorities changed, our roles changed, but Cooper’s decisions in the early days heavily shaped the way the launch went.” Shadow advisers CoinDesk spoke to more than a dozen people familiar with Movement over the course…
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