Movement Labs ‘terminates’ co-founder Rushi Manche following controversial MOVE token deals

Movement Labs announced Wednesday that it has terminated Rushi Manche, its co-founder. Manche was at the center of controversy surrounding an undisclosed market-making deal.

"Movement Labs has terminated Rushi Manche," the company announced on X. "Movement will continue under different leadership."

Later the same day, Movement announced a new company established with new leadership, named Move Industries. Two early employees of Movement — Torab You and Will Gaines — have been selected to lead the new entity.

"Why form a new company? In light of recent news, we needed a clean break," the announcement said. "Movement started with the community and our builders. We're returning to our roots." 

The announcement said Move Industries will offer better transparency with town halls and more rigorous vetting and verification efforts. It added that the new company's two main focus will be technology and community — "A focus built not only on hype, but action." 

The latest developments follow a controversial market maker deal that Manche brokered, which involved 66 million MOVE tokens, about 5% of the total supply.

This deal, orchestrated by Manche, granted a market maker to sell a large number of tokens and cause the price of MOVE to plummet, which led to allegations of market manipulation.

The lack of transparency surrounding this deal and the subsequent price drop triggered significant backlash from the community and prompted both Binance and Coinbase to take action, with Binance blacklisting the market maker and Coinbase deciding to suspend trading of the MOVE token by May 15. 

"Honestly, mistakes were made," Manche said in an April 30 X post. "I personally trusted opportunistic administrators who acted as shadow decision makers behind the decisions with their own financial motives."

Following these events and an internal investigation, Movement Labs suspended Manche on May 2, before eventually announcing his termination. 

Despite the platform's efforts to address and move on from the controversy, the price of MOVE continued to decline on Wednesday. 

According to The Block's price page, the price of MOVE has fallen by about 20% in the last 24 hours to around $0.15. This continues the downward trend observed after the scandal and the subsequent news of Coinbase's suspension.