The Movement Labs scandal exposed more than just one bad deal – it pulled back the curtain on a widespread problem in crypto: how some market makers, founders, and VCs play games to make money — whether the project succeeds or not.

In this episode, Laura speaks with José Macedo of Delphi Labs, Omar Shakeeb of SecondLane, and Taran Sabharwal of STIX to explain:

How market makers are supposed to work, and how they operate in crypto
Why insider selling is more common than you think
How projects like Movement, Mantra, and others exploit launch day hype
Whether VCs often enable this behavior with side deals that retail never hears about
And what the industry needs to do to fix this broken system

Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com

Bitwise

José Macedo, founder at Delphi Labs
Omar Shakeeb, cofounder of SecondLane
Taran Sabharwal, founder and CEO of STIX.

Movement Labs:

Market making:

Timestamps:

👋 0:00 Intro

🤝 1:51 What Omar’s and Taran’s companies do

🎭 3:40 How market making works and how crypto twists the model

⚠️ 9:35 Why crypto’s market maker incentives are broken by design

🛠️ 16:25 What it would take to fix shady market maker behavior

🚩 26:20 How some founders exploit launch day hype to dump on retail

🧠 38:11 Did Mantra’s JP pull off a “genius” move or manipulate the market?

🔍 42:22 Whether crypto traders do any research before apeing in

💸 52:48 How founders are incentivized to dump their own tokens

🏦 59:09 Why VCs may be fueling this problem with insider deals

📉 1:02:37 What crypto needs to learn from traditional finance

✅ 1:06:13 The biggest fixes the industry must prioritize to stop these scams

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A simpler alternative to deleted_at, rules of thumb for better software, faking it until you automate it, the only civilized way to read online & AI and the big five