Scandal in This Altcoin: Tokens Distributed Through Secret Agreements – Price Reacts

It has been revealed that Movement Labs, a cryptocurrency startup funded by Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial and recently in the news with scandals, secretly allocated a significant portion of MOVE tokens to some early-stage advisors.

Leaked internal documents have raised serious questions about the balance of power within the company over these deals that were kept secret from investors.

Even before the token was launched, it was learned that Movement Labs allocated a large portion of the MOVE supply to a small number of advisors, and these agreements were not disclosed to investors. In two separate business memos written by the company’s founders in 2023, it is seen that a single advisor was offered approximately $ 2 million worth of tokens annually. Although the company claims that these agreements are not binding and are made for exploratory purposes, the existence of the documents reveals the chaos in the company’s internal workings.

Following the developments, co-founder Rushi Manche was fired from the company this month, while fellow co-founder Cooper Scanlon stepped down as CEO but remained with the company. “When we founded the company, I was CTO and led the engineering team. I left most of the business deals to Cooper,” Manche said in a statement.

Among the names mentioned in the leaked documents are Zebec Protocol CEO Sam Thapaliya and Vinit Parekh. Both men played an influential role behind the scenes in the company’s early strategies. According to insiders, the two men were given access to up to 10% of the total MOVE supply through secret memorandums of understanding signed between them.

Thapaliya was “lent” 5% of the MOVE supply for market making and marketing activities, while another deal allocated an additional 2.5%. The current value of this amount exceeds $50 million. While Movement Labs claims that these agreements are not binding, Thapaliya denied this claim and stated that he will take legal action: “These agreements were never invalidated. I will legally claim my right to 2.5% tokens.”

*This is not investment advice.

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