Inside Movement’s Token-Dump Scandal: Secret Contracts, Shadow Advisers and Hidden Middlemen

A financial deal was supposed to help launch the MOVE crypto token.
Instead, it led to a token-dumping scandal, a Binance ban, and behind-the-scenes infighting.

Contracts obtained by CoinDesk help explain where it all went wrong.

Movement, the blockchain project behind the MOVE cryptocurrency, is investigating whether it was deceived into signing a financial agreement that granted a single entity outsized control over the market for its token, according to internal documents reviewed by CoinDesk.

The agreement led to 66 million MOVE tokens being sold onto the market the day after the asset’s December 9 exchange debut, triggering a steep price drop and allegations of insider dealing within a crypto project endorsed by World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture backed by Donald Trump.

Cooper Scanlon, Movement Labs’ co-founder, told employees in an April 21 Slack message that the company was examining how more than 5% of MOVE tokens earmarked for Web3Port, a market maker, were routed through a middleman named Rentech — “an entity the foundation was led to believe was a subsidiary of Web3Port but apparently is not.” Rentech denies engaging in any misrepresentation.

Movement’s contract with Rentech loaned a single counterparty around half of MOVE’s publicly held supply, according to an internal Movement Foundation memo. This granted the entity an unusually large degree of control over the fledgling token, experts told CoinDesk.

More worryingly, in versions of the contracts obtained by CoinDesk, “there are incentives basically to manipulate the price to over $5 billion fully diluted value and then dump on retail for shared profit,” concluded Zaki Manian, a veteran crypto founder who reviewed the documents. “Even participating in a discussion where that’s on paper is insane.”

Market makers, hired to provide liquidity for new tokens, stabilize prices by buying and selling on exchanges using money loaned to them by a token's issuer. But the role can also be abused, giving insiders a way to quietly manipulate markets and offload large token holdings without drawing attention.

A series of contracts obtained by CoinDesk offer a rare look into a murky corner of crypto, where weak oversight and opaque legal agreements can turn public projects into private windfalls.

While crypto market-making abuses are often rumored about, the details behind them almost never surface to the public.

The market-making contracts reviewed by CoinDesk show Rentech appeared in agreements on both sides of a deal with the Movement Foundation — once as an agent of the Movement Foundation and once as a Web3Port subsidiary — a setup that could theoretically allow the middleman to dictate terms and profit from its position in the middle.

Movement’s deal with Rentech ultimately enabled wallets tied to Web3Port — a Chinese financial firm that claims to have worked with projects including MyShell, GoPlus Security, and the Donald Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial — to immediately liquidate $38 million in MOVE tokens the day after the token debuted on exchanges.

Binance, the crypto exchange, later banned the market-making account for “misconduct,” and Movement announced a token buyback plan.

Like stock options at startups, token allocations in crypto projects are typically subject to lock-up periods intended to prevent insiders from selling large stakes during a project’s early trading.

The Binance ban created the impression — which Movement denied — that project insiders might have entered into an improper agreement with Web3Port to sell tokens ahead of schedule.

Pointing fingers

Movement, a new Layer 2 blockchain designed to scale Ethereum using Facebook's Move programming language, is one of the most talked-about crypto projects of recent years.

Founded by 22-year-old Vanderbilt University dropouts Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, the company raised $38 million from investors, nabbed a spot in the World Liberty Financial crypto portfolio, and has been the subject of intense social media attention.

Reuters reported in January that Movement Labs was close to wrapping a $100 million funding round that would have valued the company at $3 billion.

In interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with Movement’s internal operations, most of whom requested anonymity to avoid reprisal, CoinDesk heard a range of conflicting allegations over who architected the Rentech arrangement, which industry experts called highly unusual.

Galen Law-Kun, the owner of Rentech, rejects the suggestion that the Foundation was deceived into signing a market-making agreement, asserting that the entity structure was crafted with full collaboration from the Movement Foundation's general counsel, YK Pek.

Pek disputes having any involvement in creating Rentech and was, at least at first, deeply critical of the deal internally, according to a memo and other communications reviewed by CoinDesk.

In his message to employees, Scanlon, the co-founder of Movement Labs, states that Movement is “a victim in this situation.”

According to four sources familiar with the investigation who spoke to CoinDesk on condition of anonymity, Movement is also examining the involvement of its co-founder Rushi Manche, who initially forwarded a deal with Rentech to the Movement team and promoted it internally, and Sam Thapaliya, an informal adviser to Movement and business partner to Law-Kun.

Web3Port did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

"Possibly the worst agreement I have ever seen"

Despite initially rejecting a risky market-making deal with Rentech, Movement ultimately signed a revised agreement with similar features, relying on assurances from a middleman without any identifiable track record.

In the lightly regulated cryptocurrency industry, projects typically split their operations between a nonprofit foundation and a for-profit development firm. The developer — Movement Labs, in this case — builds the technology, while the foundation stewards the token and manages community resources.

The two entities are supposed to operate independently: a structure designed to shield the token from securities regulations. In Movement’s case, however, internal correspondence reviewed by CoinDesk suggests that Manche — an employee of the development firm, Movement Labs — also played an active role in the non-profit Movement Foundation.

On March 28, Manche sent a market-making contract to the Movement Foundation in a Telegram message — it needed a signature.

The draft agreement proposed loaning a massive 5% allocation of MOVE tokens to Rentech, a company with zero digital footprint.

Pek, the foundation’s lawyer, flagged the document in an email as “[p]ossibly the worst agreement” he had ever seen. In a separate memo reviewed by CoinDesk, he warned that it would hand control of MOVE’s market to a single unknown entity. Marc Piano, director of the foundation’s British Virgin Islands entity, also refused to sign.

Among the contract’s more unusual provisions was a clause allowing Rentech to liquidate its MOVE tokens if the cryptocurrency’s fully diluted value exceeded $5 billion — a benchmark that, if reached, would have allowed Rentech to split profits 50-50 with the foundation.

According to Manian, this created a perverse incentive for the market maker to artificially increase the price of MOVE so that it could sell its massive supply of tokens for a profit.

Movement Foundation declined to sign the deal, but they continued discussions with Rentech.

According to three people familiar with the discussions and legal documents reviewed by CoinDesk, Rentech eventually told Movement Foundation it was operating as a subsidiary of Web3Port, the Chinese market-making firm. According to these sources, Rentech also offered to front $60 million of its own collateral, a detail that helped sweeten the arrangement for the foundation.

On December 8, the Movement Foundation agreed to a modified version of the market-making contract that removed some of the provisions most troubling to the foundation. Among the changes: the new deal eliminated a clause that would have allowed Web3Port to sue Movement Foundation for damages if the MOVE token failed to list on a specific crypto exchange.

The revised agreement, which was primarily crafted by Pek, who originally pushed back, still contained many of the same features as the original: It still allowed Web3Port to borrow 5% of MOVE’s supply and sell tokens for a profit, albeit under a different disbursement structure.

The new contract listed Web3Port as the borrower, and a director of Rentech signed on its behalf.

DNS records show that the domain name attached to the Rentech director’s email address, web3portrentech.io, was registered on the same day the contract was signed.

A pre-existing agreement

According to three people close to the situation, Movement Foundation officials did not realize that Web3Port had already entered into an agreement with “Movement” weeks before the December 8 deal was signed.

A contract dated November 25 and obtained by CoinDesk shows that Web3Port had signed a deal, apparently with Movement, that closely resembled the original proposal Movement Foundation had rejected. In this deal, Rentech was listed as a representative of Movement.

The deal was structured similarly to the Nov. 27 contract, explicitly allowing the market maker to liquidate tokens if MOVE’s price hit certain targets — a key provision from the older agreement that stood out to experts like Manian.

"Shadow co-founder"

Sources close to Movement have presented several theories around who ultimately architected the relationship with Rentech, which led to December's token-dumping incident and a wave of negative press attention for Movement.

The agreement was initially circulated internally by Manche, who was briefly placed on administrative leave last week, as Blockworks first reported.

“Throughout the market maker selection process, the MVMT Labs team trusted various advisers and members on the foundation team to provide input and help properly structure those deals,” Manche told CoinDesk. “Apparently, at least one member of the Foundation team represented interests on both sides of the market maker deal, which we are now in the process of investigating.”

Among those close to Movement, scrutiny over the deal has also spurred questions about whether Sam Thapaliya — the founder of crypto protocol Zebec and an adviser to Manche and Scanlon — may have played a behind-the-scenes role.

Thapaliya was CC'd alongside Rentech and Manche in an email from Web3Port to "Movement Team" and other communications regarding the market-making arrangement reviewed by CoinDesk.

“My understanding is that Sam is a close advisor to Rushi and perhaps sort of a shadow third co-founder,” said one employee. “Rushi kept the relationship pretty hidden; we often just heard his name.”

“A lot of times we’d decide on something, and at the last minute there would be this change,” said another. “In those cases, we knew it was probably coming from Sam.”

Thapaliya was present at Movement's San Francisco office on the day that the MOVE token launched to the public, according to three people who were present.

Telegram screenshots reviewed by CoinDesk also show that Scanlon commissioned Thapaliya to help curate MOVE’s airdrop whitelist — the carefully controlled list of wallet addresses eligible to receive tokens in Movement's (long-delayed) community token giveaway.

The arrangement reinforced a perception among some Movement employees that Thapaliya’s influence within the company was more extensive than acknowledged.

Thapaliya, according to a statement he shared with CoinDesk, met Manche and Scanlon while they were college students and has served as an outside adviser to Movement over the years. Thapaliya told CoinDesk he has "no equity in Movement Labs," "no token from Movement Foundation" and "no decision-making power" within either organization.

Who is Rentech?

Rentech, the entity at the center of the token dispute, was created by Galen Law-Kun, Thapaliya’s business partner. Law-Kun told CoinDesk he established Rentech as a subsidiary of Autonomy, his Singapore-based financial services firm, to connect crypto projects with family offices in Asia.

In a statement to CoinDesk, Law-Kun said YK Pek “helped set up and was general counsel of Autonomy SG, which is the parent or affiliate company of Rentech.” He also claimed that Pek, despite pushing back against the initial Rentech deal internally, “advised to set up the Rentech structure for the launch” and “advised on the first version of the contract, which is almost identical to the contract he later drafted and approved for the foundation.”

CoinDesk's investigation has not uncovered any evidence confirming that Pek set up Rentech or authored the first version of the contract while acting on behalf of Autonomy.

“I am not and have never been Galen or any of his entities' general counsel,” stated Pek. “A corporate administration firm that I co-founded, and which provides corporate secretarial services to over 150 entities in the Web3 space has provided corporate secretarial services to two of his companies, both of which filed 'no assets' as part of their annual renewals in 2025. Neither of these companies are Rentech.”

Pek states that he once spent “two hours” reviewing an advisory agreement that Law-Kun had with a project in 2024. Additionally, "[h]e reached out to me regarding the FTX filing deadline," and in August, "he forwarded me an NDA Docusign which I cast my eye over without charging him."

“I have no idea why Galen would claim I am his general counsel and I am frankly confused and disturbed by that claim,” Pek continued. “He was represented in email correspondence with my corporate services partner by his personal lawyer from one 'Hillington Group'."

According to Pek, “[b]oth the general counsels of Movement Foundation (myself) and Movement Labs were introduced to GS Legal as counsel for Rentech by Rushi Manche.”

In Law-Kun's telling, Pek was "introduced to 10 projects as my Autonomy lawyer" and "never hesitated to say otherwise or correct the statement." According to Law-Kun, "The GS introduction was just done as a formality requested by Movement."

Movement Labs said in a statement posted to X after the publication of this article that it was "aware of the CoinDesk story" and that it, alongside the foundation, had "commissioned an exhaustive third-party review" which was ongoing.

In his Slack message to employees, Scanlon said Movement had retained Groom Lake, an outside auditing firm, to “conduct the third-party review into recent market maker abnormalities.”

“Movement is a victim in this situation,” he wrote.

UPDATE (April 30, 2025, 17:45 UTC): Adds Movement Labs statement.