Crypto Pump & Dumps Have Become the Ugly Norm. Can They Be Stopped? - Ep. 834
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
- José Macedo, founder at Delphi Labs
- Omar Shakeeb, cofounder of SecondLane
- Taran Sabharwal, founder and CEO of STIX.
Movement Labs:
- Unchained: How MOVE’s Contracts Put a Pump and Dump Into a Legal Agreement
- CoinDesk: Inside Movement’s Token-Dump Scandal: Secret Contracts, Shadow Advisers and Hidden Middlemen
Market making:
- The Chopping Block: Can Crypto Clean Itself Up? Market Structure, Trust, and Regulation
- Mantra Founder Is Burning 150 Million Tokens. Would He Try to Get Them Returned?
- ZachXBT Ties REEF Founders to OM Token Crash
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
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