Movement Labs founder Rushi Manche refutes insider trading allegations tied to Trump-backed World Liberty Financial

Quick Take
- Movement Labs co-founder Rushi Manche said the organization is not in “direct communication” with the Trump-backed DeFi project World Liberty Financial, which purchased MOVE tokens ahead of a mainnet announcement on Tuesday.
- These transactions occurred approximately two hours before Movement Labs announced its developer mainnet via a press release.


Movement Labs co-founder Rushi Manche said the organization is not in direct communication with the Trump-backed DeFi project World Liberty in wake of questions around the timing of its purchases of MOVE tokens.
Earlier on Jan. 28, World Liberty purchased approximately $2 million worth of MOVE tokens on Tuesday, making it World Liberty’s tenth-largest holding. The transactions took place 10 minutes before DB newswire reported, citing sources, that the Movement team was talking to DOGE head Elon Musk about potential blockchain integrations.
“Oof, this is NOT a good look. WLFI multisig buys MOVE and then 10 minutes later the press reports the Movement talking to Musk story,” Eric Conor said on X.
Manche said the purchases took him unawares. “I actually just woke up this morning to the pleasant news,” he told The Block. “We're not really involved at all.”
Manche added that he would like the MOVE token to be involved with World Liberty but said Movement Labs doesn’t have any direct contact with the team behind it.
It wasn’t only World Liberty that made purchases ahead of the Musk news breaking. Onchain data shows that some traders seemingly anticipated an announcement. Around 8:30 a.m. ET — about an hour before the news came out — open interest for the MOVE token spiked from about $25 million to $100 million on Binance.
In relation to the allegations of insider trading, he said, “No, I don't think anything was coordinated, we were really focused on developer mainnet this morning, nothing else.”
Despite the reports, Manche said the 40-person Movement Labs team is not in touch with Musk or DOGE. “I don't think we are in touch as far as I understand,” he said.
The timing of the Movement Labs developer mainnet launch
The news about the potential interactions between Movement Labs and Musk came just over an hour before the project launched its developer mainnet launch — adding a potential second event that traders could have been anticipating.
Manche noted that the developer mainnet was not previously announced as part of the project’s roadmap. He also said he was unsure whether the World Liberty team had access to non-public information.
“We just announced it today. We teased that there'd be something exciting coming this week and posted a picture of a cornucopia but nothing crazy,” Manche said, referring to Movement’s multi-asset liquidity campaign looking to court developers called Cornucopia.
“The main focus for the team was making sure our APAC builders had ample time to deploy,” Manche said, noting that this week is the Lunar New Year. “We wanted to give them a few days so that they can enjoy Chinese New Year and not be stressed by timelines. It was not a technical thing at all.”
Movement’s mainnet launch is coming in two distinct phases — the developer mainnet launch on Tuesday and the public mainnet, expected in mid-February when MOVE will be activated as a gas token.
According to Manche, Movement is close to closing its $100 million Series B funding round, which would value the organization at $300 million.
Editor's note (Jan. 29, 2025): This story was rewritten for clarity.
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