MVMT Labs, Inc., the developer behind the Movement blockchain, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware on July 15, 2026. The company had raised $141.4 million from investors including the venture firm Polychain, yet its chain collected as little as $1 in daily fees.
Key Takeaways
- MVMT Labs filed Chapter 11 in Delaware, listing liabilities of $1 million to $10 million and assets under $500,000.
- Movement raised $141.4 million from investors, including a Series A led by the venture firm Polychain.
- Daily fees on the Movement chain fell to $1 in the last 24 hours, against roughly $133 million in total value locked.
- Rushi Manche, a co-founder, holds the largest unsecured claim at about $1.6 million and keeps a 34.25% equity stake.
- MOVE token holders face losses of more than 99% from the token’s all-time high.
What Happened?
MVMT Labs filed under Subchapter V, the small-business track of Chapter 11 that lets a company keep operating while it restructures its debts. Court records list assets between $100,001 and $500,000 against liabilities between $1 million and $10 million, with 200 to 999 creditors that include the crypto custody bank Anchorage Digital and several state revenue departments. The Chapter 11 docket sets a claims deadline of September 14 and calls for a restructuring plan by October 13. Rushi Manche, a co-founder who still holds a 34.25% stake, carries the single largest unsecured claim at about $1.6 million.
🚨BREAKING: Movement Labs files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with less than $500,000 in assets, 18 months after targeting a $3 BILLION valuation.
— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) July 21, 2026
Former co-founder Rushi Manche is listed among the company’s largest creditors.
The filing follows a token market-making scandal, a… pic.twitter.com/spN7PpdDnD
How the Market-Making Deal Sank MOVE?
Movement’s troubles began after the MOVE token launched in December 2024. An investigation in 2025 described a market-making agreement that handed one party outsized control of the circulating supply, with terms that let roughly 66 million tokens reach the open market the day after the Binance listing. That sudden supply erased billions in value within days.
The dispute centered on Rentech, a middleman in contracts with a Chinese market maker. Binance blocked the market maker’s account for violations and froze about $38 million of its profits for potential user compensation, and Coinbase halted MOVE trading. The company then launched a token buyback, brought in the independent firm Groom Lake to review the deal, and suspended Manche in May 2025 before firing him. Leadership had also signed memos allocating up to 10% of MOVE supply to advisers without telling investors, documents the company later called non-binding.
Funding Raised Against Fees Earned
Movement built its chain on the Move programming language, the same one behind Aptos and Sui, and pulled together $141.4 million across several rounds. DeFiLlama data shows daily app revenue stayed below $800 every day since November 2025, while chain fees sat in single digits for months before hitting $1 over the past day. Total value locked holds near $133 million, a figure that most likely reflects incentive farming rather than steady user demand. Money at that scale should buy years of runway, which makes the gap between the raise and the onchain activity the core of this case.
Move Industries Bets on Payments
After the leadership change, the team formed a separate entity, Move Industries, led by CEO Torab Torabi. The company announced a strategic pivot in June 2025, dropping its bid to compete with other Ethereum layer-2 networks in favor of international payments, remittances, and stablecoin settlement, and it claims licensed payment infrastructure across the US, Canada, and EU countries. Torabi denied rumors of a collapse on July 21, saying the MVMT Labs bankruptcy does not affect Move Industries. Investors have stayed skeptical. MOVE trades near $0.01073 with a market cap of $44.78 million, and the token’s fully diluted valuation of $107.47 million marks a fall of more than 99% from its all-time high, close to the record low of $0.01044 set two days before the filing.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
The filing splits two stories that Movement’s team has worked to keep apart. The blockchain and its new payments venture can run without MVMT Labs, but the entity that raised $141.4 million is the one now sorting debts of up to $10 million in court, and a chain earning $1 a day was never going to fund itself. The December 2024 supply shock did the early damage, leaving the token near a penny long before the bankruptcy paperwork arrived.
The restructuring plan due October 13 should reveal what assets survive inside the bankrupt shell and how far creditors, led by Manche’s own claim, can be repaid. Open questions remain checkable rather than rhetorical: how many of the 200-to-999 creditors recover anything, whether Move Industries’ claimed payment licenses are active in each named market, and what cash sits behind assets listed under $500,000. For holders, a developer bankruptcy does not shut the network down, and existing balances and smart contracts should keep functioning. Liquidity and confidence, though, tend to thin as a case like this unfolds, and any recovery would rest on real payment volume through Move Industries rather than a new name on the door.
