Movement Labs denies allegations of insider trading in the MOVE token

What’s new? Movement Labs has denied allegations of insider trading in the MOVE token in connection with Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto project’s transactions. In a comment to The Block, Movement Labs co-founder Rushi Manche said that the company is not directly connected to World Liberty Financial.

Material by The Block

What else is known? The discussion in the crypto community unfolded after World Liberty Financial purchased MOVE for $2 million, making the asset the tenth largest in the project’s portfolio.

What is notable here is that World Liberty Financial bought MOVE via decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) CoW Swap on January 28 at around 14:00 UTC, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Arkham Research. The transaction took place two hours before Movement Labs announced the developer mainnet in a press release on PR Newswire.

It is not known conclusively whether World Liberty had access to the confidential information. However, on-chain data shows that some traders may have also been expecting an important announcement from the Movement Labs team.

Before its publication, at around 13:30 UTC, open interest in the MOVE token on the largest centralized exchange (CEX) Binance rose from around $25 million to $100 million. On Coinbase, the largest US CEX, open interest also increased by 30% to $55 million.

Under US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules on insider trading, companies are prohibited from using non-public information to gain an unfair advantage when trading their shares.

Earlier, Rushi Manche said in his X-account that the project will have an eventful week. At the same time, he emphasized in media comments that the launch of a mainnet for developers was not previously announced in the project’s roadmap, and Movement Labs did not provide the Trump project with its tokens.

World Liberty has already purchased tokens from affiliates on several occasions. For example, the project purchased $10 million worth of native tokens of the TRON (TRX) blockchain after TRON founder Justin Sun was appointed as an advisor. It also bought $5,6 million worth of the Aave (AAVE) DeFi protocol tokens. World Liberty itself is a fork of Aave.

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Movement’s mainnet launch will take place in two phases: the mainnet launch for developers, which took place on January 28, and the launch of the public mainnet, which is expected in mid-February, when MOVE will be activated as a token to pay for gas (transaction fees).

Manche also revealed that Movement is close to completing a $100 million Series B funding round, which will take the organization to a valuation of $300 billion.

In addition, the media also reported that the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, is exploring the use of blockchain to achieve its goals. According to an unnamed source, Movement was among the companies that were in talks with the DOGE team.

However, Manche clarified that the 40-person Movement Labs team has no contact with either Musk or DOGE.