So, like, the Movement’s MOVE token is now in “limit-only mode” on the trading platform, right? Updated on May 1, 2025, at like 6:13 p.m. It was published earlier at 4:56 p.m. Coinbase is gonna suspend trading of Movement’s MOVE token, and they’re saying it’s because of some “recent reviews.” This all comes after a CoinDesk investigation found some shady market-making deals that experts are saying led to price manipulation. The token dropped by over 13% when the news about the trading suspension broke. Meanwhile, the CoinDesk 20 Index, which is like a broader market gauge, went up by 4.4%.
Movement Labs is now digging into how a market maker might have gotten their hands on a bunch of its tokens. Apparently, this market maker then dumped them on regular investors, which caused the price to take a nosedive. The market maker in question is Web3Port, and they’ve been mentioned in contracts that CoinDesk reported on before. According to CoinDesk, Movement Labs co-founder Cooper Scanlon told employees last month that they were looking into how Rentech, which Movement thought was tied to Web3Port, managed to grab more than 5% of Web3Port’s MOVE tokens. These contracts showed that Rentech had the power to sell off all its tokens under certain conditions, which experts are saying could have given them a reason to pump up the token’s value.
Binance, a crypto exchange, later banned Web3Port after $38 million worth of MOVE tokens in wallets linked to Web3Port were cashed out right after MOVE was launched on the exchange. Coinbase didn’t spill all the beans about the trading suspension; they just said it’s happening on May 15 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time (21:00 UTC). They tweeted, “We regularly monitor the assets on our exchange to ensure they meet our listing standards. Based on recent reviews, we will suspend trading for Movement (MOVE) on May 15, 2025, on or around 2 PM ET.”
Coinbase also said they’ve already put their order books in “limit-only mode” for MOVE tokens. This means that trades will only go through at specific prices, not at the token’s actual spot price. If you wanna know more about this whole scandal, you can check out the article titled “Inside Movement’s Token-Dump Scandal: Secret Contracts, Shadow Advisers and Hidden Middlemen.”
UPDATE: Some extra context was added on May 1, 2025, at 17:18 UTC by Nikhilesh De. He’s the managing editor at CoinDesk for global policy and regulation, and he covers stuff like regulators, lawmakers, and institutions. He mentioned that he owns less than $50 in BTC and less than $20 in ETH. Nikhilesh even won a Gerald Loeb award for his reporting on FTX in 2023 and was named the Journalist of the Year by the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers in 2020.
So, yeah, that’s the whole scoop on what’s going down with Movement’s MOVE token and all the drama surrounding it. Not really sure why this matters, but hey, it’s the world of crypto, right? Things can get pretty wild out there.
