Key Takeaways
- Coinbase will suspend MOVE token trading on May 15 after a listing review.
- The Movement project faces controversy after a scandal involving market manipulation.
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Coinbase announced Thursday that it will disable trading of Movement’s MOVE token on May 15, as controversy deepens around the high-profile layer 2 blockchain project.
The exchange said in a statement on X that it has already shifted MOVE order books to limit-only mode.
Coinbase did not explicitly cite a reason for the suspension. However, the company noted that the decision followed a routine listing standards review, which found that MOVE no longer met Coinbase’s requirements.
The token dropped 20% to $0.18 following the announcement—its lowest point since launch—according to Binance data. At press time, MOVE saw a modest rebound to $0.20.
The Movement blockchain, which launched its mainnet beta and native token last December, has faced growing scrutiny since March when Binance identified and froze the profits of a market maker allegedly liquidating large quantities of MOVE tokens.
In response, the Movement Network Foundation cut ties with the market maker and announced a $38 million USDT buyback program to establish the Movement Strategic Reserve.
Movement Labs and the Movement Network later confirmed a third-party investigation into the matter, after Binance removed the market maker for misconduct, Blockworks reported last month.
A new report from CoinDesk this week sheds more light on the controversy. The release revealed that Movement Labs was allegedly misled into signing a market-making agreement that gave a middleman, Rentech, control over 66 million MOVE tokens.
The deal was said to have enabled a $38 million selloff, triggering sharp price drops and accusations of manipulation.
Internal documents showed that Rentech acted on both sides of the deal—as an agent of the Movement Foundation and a subsidiary of Web3Port—raising conflict-of-interest concerns.
The fallout also exposed internal divisions, as Movement’s legal counsel initially objected to the deal but was overruled, according to CoinDesk. Movement is investigating whether co-founder Rushi Manche or advisors like Sam Thapaliya played a deeper role than originally disclosed.
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