Most Influential: Rushi Manche

AI Summary3 min read

TL;DR

Rushi Manche, co-founder of Movement Labs, was ousted after a scandal involving hidden market-making deals with Rentech, leading to a token dump, price collapse, and industry-wide scrutiny of opaque token allocations. The incident caused leadership changes and reputational damage.

Key Takeaways

•Rushi Manche was fired from Movement Labs following a scandal where hidden contracts with Rentech led to dumping 5% of MOVE tokens, causing a price crash.
•The scandal prompted major exchanges like Coinbase to suspend or delist MOVE, intensifying industry scrutiny on token allocations and insider trading risks.
•Movement Labs underwent a leadership shake-up and reputational damage, highlighting vulnerabilities in early-stage crypto token deals.
•The incident fueled broader anxiety in the DeFi sector, leading to increased regulatory and investor focus on transparency in token launches.

Before Rushi Manche’s ousting from Movement Labs, the crypto infrastructure startup he co-founded with fellow Vanderbilt University dropout Cooper Scanlon, he was a rising young star in the DeFi world.

This feature is a part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 list.

But in April 2025, the buzzy project became embroiled in a scandal over hidden market-making deals connected to MOVE’s token launch. Internal documents obtained by CoinDesk showed that Movement Labs, under Manche’s leadership, had signed a contentious contract with a little-known intermediary firm, Rentech, which served simultaneously as a supposed subsidiary of the listed market-maker Web3Port and as an agent for the project. That structure gave Rentech control over roughly 66 million MOVE tokens —about 5% of the total supply —which were rapidly dumped on the market.

The dumping immediately caused a sharp collapse in MOVE’s price and widespread investor backlash. As scrutiny intensified, major exchanges, including Coinbase, either suspended or delisted the token. A few days after the initial scandal was revealed, Movement Labs suspended Manche pending a third-party governance review. After that, it didn’t take long for the company to announce Manche’s firing.

The scandal led to a leadership shake-up, reputational damage for the project, and a steep fall in token value. But beyond that, it fueled industry-wide anxiety about opaque token allocations and insider trading risks, prompting exchanges, investors and regulators to intensify scrutiny of early-stage token deals across the crypto sector.

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