Movement Labs' bankruptcy claims
Ousted co-founder Rushi Manche filed the largest claim, $1.6M, in Movement Labs' bankruptcy, which lists up to $10M in liabilities.
Movement Labs, the team behind the Move-language layer-2 network MOVE, has filed for bankruptcy. The largest single claim against the estate, $1.6 million, comes from Rushi Manche, the co-founder the project's own foundation pushed out earlier this year.
What the filing shows
The bankruptcy petition lists assets of between $100,001 and $500,000 against liabilities of up to $10 million, according to The Block. That's a gap of roughly 20 to 1 between what the company holds and what it owes. Manche's $1.6 million claim tops the creditor list, ahead of vendors, contractors, and other counterparties named in the filing. Movement's foundation removed Manche from his role months earlier, following controversy over a market maker deal tied to the MOVE token that drew criticism for its terms and its impact on token holders.
The read
A $10 million liability book against under $500,000 in assets is not a company restructuring. It's a company that ran out of runway after its own governance blew up in public. The token deal that got Manche pushed out was supposed to be a liquidity arrangement; instead it became the event that split the founder from the entity he built, and now that same entity can't cover its bills. The size of Manche's claim is the sharper detail here: the person removed for allegedly mishandling the project's finances is now the biggest name owed money by the wreckage. Bankruptcy filings sort claims by priority, not by reputation, so his $1.6 million sits in the same queue as every other creditor regardless of how his exit was framed at the time.
For a network that launched with a live token, an exchange listing, and outside capital, ending up with under half a million dollars in assets says the operating company and the token's market value were never the same thing. Token holders who bought MOVE on the promise of the network's growth have no direct claim on this estate. Whatever gets recovered here goes to named creditors, not to the market.
What to watch
The bankruptcy court will need to rule on creditor priority, including whether Manche's claim gets treated as an ordinary unsecured debt or gets contested given the circumstances of his departure. A contested ruling, or a settlement that pays him less than the full $1.6 million, would confirm the foundation's version of events. A clean payout would suggest the dispute was more about optics than misconduct. Either way, the case is a marker for how token projects with separate foundations and operating companies handle insolvency when the two entities' interests no longer line up.