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