Crypto Pump & Dumps Have Become the Ugly Norm. Can They Be Stopped? - Ep. 834

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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 Bitwise 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	There's ghost chains still alive with billions of dollars in assets doing nothing.
0:04.7	It's great.
0:05.5	I mean, Ripple is the amazing tech, but no idea what they do.
0:09.5	They're the largest old coin.
0:11.6	Yeah, it's very, it's very, very hard to be a founder of crypto these days.
0:15.7	Lack of a retail bit is very, uh, it's very apparent.
0:19.3	Meme coins are up more than most alts this week Meme coins are up more than most
0:21.1	old coins this week. AI coins are up, more than most old coins and infrastructure coins
0:24.6	this week. It's a tough market. And I sympathize with the founders.
0:32.5	Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Every episode, we're featuring your comments. Here's what you had to say about Coinbase's recent acquisition of Deribit from my interview with Owen Lau. On X, Mex Dax said, looks like Coinbase just secured a sweeter deal than Donald Trump. Also on X, Astoria Viola, said, bruh. Derivatives are the real
0:56.1	playground, but $2.9 billion for Deribit Coinbase? What's the master plan here? Want to hear
1:01.5	your comment on Unchained? Leave it on Farcaster, YouTube, or X? We read everyone. This is the May 13th,
1:07.5	2025 episode of Unchained. Crypto moves fast. It's why Bitwise launched the weekly CIO memo, a jargon-free
1:15.4	summary of what's moving crypto markets written by one of the best in the business,
1:19.9	CIO Matt Hogan. Get up to speed in five minutes or less. Check it out at bitwiseinvestments.com
1:26.1	slash CIO memo.
1:28.3	Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing.
1:32.7	Today's topic is market making and crypto.
1:35.1	Here to discuss are Jose Mascato, founder at Delphi Labs, Omar Shakib, co-found at Second Lane,
1:41.1	and Taran Suburwal, founder and CEO of Stix.
1:44.1	Welcome to Jose, Omar, and Taran. Hey there. founder and CEO of Stix. Welcome to Say Omar and Taran.
1:46.4	Hey there.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Laura Shin, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Laura Shin and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.