The Chopping Block: Can Crypto Clean Itself Up? Market Structure, Trust, and Regulation - Ep. 833

Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Robert Leshner, and special guest Evgeny Gaevoy of Wintermute break down the biggest stories in crypto. This week: the $38M Move token dump exposes the shady side of market making, with shocking incentives that blurred the line between liquidity support and pure exit liquidity. We dig into what really happened, why major VCs looked the other way, and how the entire token launch playbook might be broken. Evgeny joins to give the market maker’s perspective — and to answer the question: how many more of these sh*t shows are still lurking beneath the surface?

Show highlights

🔹 $38M Token Dump Exposed – How Movement Labs’ shady deal with Web3Port revealed the dark side of crypto market making.

🔹 Market Makers or Exit Liquidity? – Inside the incentive structure that let a market maker dump tokens and split profits with the foundation.

🔹 VCs Looked the Other Way – Why top investors backed Movement Labs despite red flags — and what it says about crypto due diligence.

🔹 Rushi Gets Fired – The Movement Labs CEO is out after weeks of denial. But was the rest of the team complicit too?

🔹 Wintermute’s Evgeny Speaks Out – The biggest market maker in crypto weighs in on shady deals, dump mechanics, and transparency failures.

🔹 Airdrops, Float Games, and Retail Rugging – We dissect how token launches get manipulated behind the scenes — and who really pays.

🔹 The Case for Disclosure – Why Haseeb argues crypto needs mandatory public disclosures for market making agreements — before regulators step in.

🔹 Self-Regulation or SEC Crackdown? – Can the industry grow up on its own… or are we begging for another wave of securities enforcement?

🔹 Crypto’s Trust Crisis – Without transparency, the entire token model risks collapse. This episode lays out how to fix it.

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

Guest

⭐️ Evgeny Gaevoy, Founder and CEO at Wintermute

Inside Movement’s Token-Dump Scandal: Secret Contracts, Shadow Advisers and Hidden Middlemen by Sam Kessler

🔗https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/04/30/inside-movement-s-token-dump-scandal-secret-contracts-shadow-advisors-and-hidden-middlemen

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:19 Movement Labs Scandal: Inside the Market Maker Mess

06:26 How Crypto Market Making Really Works

10:54 Rigged from the Start?

17:25 Who Knew What? Movement Labs and the Industry Fallout

25:57 Why Crypto Needs a Market Maker Disclosure

34:45 Transparency vs. Manipulation

38:02 Do Market Makers Control Token Prices?

51:51 The Crypto Market Structure Bill: What’s at Stake

59:18 Can We Fix Crypto Before It Breaks?

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