Movement Labs lent a market maker 5% of its token — it dumped $38M and Chapter 11 followed

Movement Labs, a blockchain project that had drawn attention through an endorsement from the Trump-linked World Liberty Financial, launched its MOVE token in December 2024. To manage trading, its foundation contracted a market maker called Rentech, which had almost no public track record, and loaned it about 5% of MOVE's publicly held supply — an unusually large share to hand a single counterparty.

The day after MOVE's exchange debut, 66 million tokens were sold, generating roughly $38 million and crashing the price. An internal investigation later found the Rentech contract had been called "possibly the worst agreement" foundation lawyers had seen, structured so the market maker could help pump MOVE's valuation past $5 billion fully diluted and then sell into that price for shared profit with an operator on the other side of the deal.

Binance banned the trading account involved for misconduct and Movement announced a $38 million token buyback to compensate users; Coinbase suspended and later delisted MOVE. Co-founder Rushi Manche was terminated, and a third-party investigation subsequently found the foundation had also secretly promised advisors tokens worth up to 10% of total supply. Movement Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2026.