Exclusive interview with Movement Cooper: dropout teenagers successfully counterattacked, creating billions of dollars in projects received additional holdings from Trump's family projects

Interview: Cassidy, PANews

Written by: Nancy, PANews

In the crypto circle, a non-rules arena, it is not uncommon for the counterattack of dropouts. Vitalik Buterin, CZ, Shayne Coplan, Pacman, Luca Netz... Behind these names are trendsetters who dare to break the rules and seize the trend of the times. Cooper Scanlon, as one of the co-founders of Movement, is also one of the microcosm of the era when encryption technology gives individuals breakthroughs in class constraints.

At the Taipei venue of GMove Cooper: Movement's APAC Tour 2025 Asia Tour, PANews interviewed Cooper exclusively. In this in-depth conversation, he shared his mental journey of resolutely dropping out of school and devoted himself to the field of encryption, analyzed Movement's unique advantages and future plans in fierce competition, and combined with the US regulatory environment, he put forward unique insights on the future development of the industry.

Cooper was born in poor background and tried to change his destiny through education, but the traditional employment path disappointed him and eventually chose to drop out of school, bet on himself and devote himself to the crypto market. In the interview, Cooper revealed that Movement has raised at least $55 million in venture capital so far, and has made every effort to accelerate ecological construction after the developer's main website is online.

As a potential player of Ethereum L2, Cooper bluntly stated that the current L2 market is seriously homogenized and lacks real innovation. The core competitiveness of Movement lies in the use of the Move language to improve security, executability and audit efficiency. He firmly believes that Move will replace Solidity and become the mainstream language for the next generation of smart contracts. At the same time, he emphasized that the community is the lifeline of the project, and issuing tokens before the main network is a key step to ensure decentralization and avoid excessive concentration of power.

Looking ahead to crypto regulation, Cooper said that although Trump is crypto-friendly, policy changes will take time, and policies may gradually benefit local projects in the next four years.

Drop-out teenagers enter the bear market, aiming at Move language against

the trend and seize the "big opportunity"

Cooper grew up in a remote American town where there are few career opportunities. He was from a poor family and was under heavy economic pressure since he was a child. He wanted to make a living and wanted to take care of his family. He started working in high school, but soon realized that this hard work could only bring food and clothing, and could not make him truly turn over. In order to break the predicament, Cooper pinned his hopes on getting high scores in ACT scores, and firmly believed that a top university was the key to his change of destiny. Finally, he entered Vanderbilt University as he wished. Confused with his future career direction, he chose a unique and practical major in human and organizational development—a discipline similar to business psychology, with a minor in computer science and philosophy, which he believes could be suitable for multiple fields.

However, college life has not pointed out a clear path for Cooper. Because he was still young, he missed the golden age of the Internet and social media, but he kept thinking: Where is the next big opportunity? And how can you catch it? The rise of cryptocurrencies made Cooper’s eyes shine. He keenly realized that there was still a lack of real experts in this emerging field, and as a college student, he could quickly become a “relative expert” through self-study. So, Cooper began to work with large funds to teach them the knowledge of tokenization and blockchain, while learning their operating models.

"Every week, I would sort out what I learned into presentations and explain to them. In this way, for a few hours a week, I could have face-to-face conversations with managing partners at large funds. I gradually realized that if I followed the traditional career path, it would have taken decades to have the opportunity to sit in the meeting room of these people. And emerging technologies allowed me to do it in college."

Meanwhile, Cooper got an internship at Bloomberg. At first he thought that entering a large company would change his destiny. However, reality shattered his fantasy - New York's ridiculously high rents and fierce rental competition made him breathless, and even internships at top companies, his salary could not support his basic life. This experience completely disappointed him with his traditional career path. He began to realize that real opportunities are hidden in emerging technologies and applied to real scenarios, and these skills can be mastered without a college diploma. On this day, Cooper made a bold decision: quit his internship as a Bloomberg and dropped out of Vanderbilt University. But behind Cooper's decision was that he had already cooperated with the fund to develop structured products in the Move language.

When he dropped out of school, Cooper was not afraid, but was excited. In the past few weeks, he had a lot of work, and had more to do but had no time to finish it. "To be honest, it's more terrible to rely on others to make a living than to drop out of school. The market environment has been deteriorating, and I think this situation will continue. I don't want to go back to the days when I worry about the next meal. So, I decided to bet all my bets on myself, which is the best decision I have ever made." Cooper admitted.

In November 2022, Cooper co-founded Movement with another co-founder Rushi Manche, who also dropped out of school. However, this is the time when the crypto bear market after the FTX collapses, market liquidity is exhausted and investor confidence falls to freezing point. At the same time, the Move language as an emerging blockchain programming language has not been widely accepted, and the market's awareness of it is more about the performance of Move chains such as Aptos and Sui. These projects have not shown enough resilience in the deep bear market after the FTX crash.

Cooper recalls: "When we started, the market was extremely low liquidity and was completely in a deep bear market. Many people questioned me, 'Will you go back to school, right? Try it, go back when it's over'. The biggest challenge was to make people willing to bet on us and Move. Move was very new at the time, and most people had no experience. All they saw was the bad state of the Move chain after the FTX crash. Even the top teams in the Web3 field - like the Swedish team who came out directly from the Facebook Libra project, the elite with the world's top corporate background - failed. So people would think: If they couldn't do it, why could these two young people drop out of college?"

Faced with doubts, Cooper and Rushi chose to prove themselves with actions. "The way we deal with this situation is to work hard. For example, for a while, we wrote 50 pages of documents over a weekend, elaborating on white papers, marketing plans and ecological development plans. We have to put in a lot of effort to show people we deserve to bet and to inspire their confidence."

"We scored to about a few hundred people, and were rejected hundreds of times before we got the first 'YES'. Keeping working hard is also the key to Movement's journey to this day." Cooper advised the young founder, ready to prove himself and be happy to take that extra step. The hardest thing is to make the first people believe in you. Success often depends on time and love -believe in what you are doing, keep working hard, even if the rewards don't show up immediately. As long as you get the first support, the snowball can roll. ”

Despite the difficulty in getting started, Movement has gradually won market recognition. Today, Movement's FDV has reached billions of dollars, and Cooper has also disclosed that it has received $55 million in financing support. Investment institutions include Polychain Capital, YZi Labs, Hack VC, Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Aptos, etc.

The developer's main network is online to accelerate the pace of

ecological construction

In February this year, Movement announced the launch of the developer mainnet, which is a key step in this Ethereum Layer2 solution based on the Move language. This launch not only opens up the core infrastructure, but also comes with the release of technical documents and developer resources, as well as the deployment of selected partners and DeFi protocols.

In Cooper's view, the mainnet launch is like a carefully prepared party for Movement - DJ, lights, and balloons, and none of them are missing. Currently, Movement’s focus is on integrating all elements to ensure the smooth operation of the ecosystem, including a multi-asset liquidity program called Cornucopia. The plan is launched simultaneously with the public mainnet Beta, aiming to achieve deeper market efficiency by providing basic support for DeFi applications. In the interview, Cooper compared this plan to replace "mechanical hard drives" with "solid-state hard drives", aiming to inject strong liquidity into the main network when it is officially launched and ensure that the DeFi ecosystem can operate seamlessly when the incentive mechanism is started.

For any emerging blockchain, liquidity is the lifeblood of ecological development, especially in core scenarios of DeFi, such as indexes and lending. Cooper is well aware of this, saying, “Our goal is to prepare liquidity for core applications and ensure that the DeFi ecosystem can operate seamlessly when incentives are launched.”

This plan not only focuses on technical optimization, but also focuses on the integration of real-world assets (RWA) and institutional capital. "What I'm most excited about is that RWA and institutional products are integrating with our network. These products used to be limited to ultra-high net worth people, and even American citizens like me are difficult to reach because their yields are far higher than ordinary products, sometimes as high as twice as many." Cooper mentioned that this is exactly what Facebook originally developed the Move language - providing institutions with secure and efficient blockchain solutions, and the limitations of the Solidity language in terms of security and speed can no longer meet this demand.

Movement’s vision is to bring these high-quality financial products to global users through the DeFi ecosystem. "We hope that users can not only have access to U.S. financial products and the US dollar, but also use RWA for on-chain innovations, such as lending or derivatives trading, to create a truly powerful financial environment," Cooper added.

In addition to injecting Cornucopia liquidity into the application to enhance ecological vitality, Movement plans to launch application incentives, a mechanism similar to the "Move annualized rate of return" to encourage users to participate in depth, and will be launched on the second phase of the Parthenon test network soon.

In addition, in order to further attract and retain developers, Movement is accelerating its layout around the world, including a recent focus on Asian tours. "Asia is the future of programming, with the largest developer base and the fastest growth rate here." Cooper said in an interview that by holding events in various places, Movement brings together developers, investors, community members, KOLs and traders to provide resources, market support and funding channels for newly entered developers. This puzzle-like ecological construction method not only accelerates the implementation of the project, but also lays the foundation for future global hackathon plans. Cooper revealed that after the successful hosting of Movement Mania, the next phase of the global competition is in preparation to further stimulate the creativity of the developer community.

To use Move to reshape Ethereum L2, emphasizing community-driven

strategies

As Ethereum L2 based on the Move language, Movement Network aims to enhance blockchain security and high executability. However, the current Ethereum L2 market is too saturated, the market shows a significant head effect, and the problems of complex user experience and ecological fragmentation are becoming increasingly prominent.

"There are too many different blockchains now, especially L2. The reason why the market is so crowded is that most L2 is just a replica of the former. In addition to the speed increase of 10%, coupled with the new marketing packaging, there is no substantial difference, and it still cannot get rid of the inherent flaws of Solidity and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)." Cooper said that the key difference in Movement is to directly introduce the next generation of smart contract language Move into the Ethereum ecosystem. In Movement, can users have both security and performance, enjoy the convenience of writing smart contracts, and conduct audits at lower costs and faster speeds, while improving the pace of on-chain innovation. All of this does not need to leave the Ethereum ecosystem, and users can directly experience all the advantages brought by Move.

Cooper firmly believes that Move will become the mainstream language for smart contract development in the future. "Move is really our North Star. It is the future of smart contract development and will replace Solidity. Because in the future, millions of developers will learn about Move. If you look at the emerging markets where developers are growing rapidly, such as Vietnam, Nigeria, etc., developers in these regions have shifted from Rust to Move development."

But in the Move ecosystem, Movement is not unique. Projects such as Aptos and Sui are also based on the Move language and have their own technical advantages. Cooper emphasized that Movement's layout in decentralization and community-driven makes it unique. Compared with the fact that most chains maximize the reserve of tokens for teams and investors at startup, including the staking lockout that causes the circulation to be much lower than the staking, thus harming the interests of token holders, Movement truly puts the community first, and the tokens are jointly held by supporters, developers, builders and community members, and the teams and investors do not participate in the staking. This means that the tokens in circulation belong to users entirely and there is no need to worry about insiders selling them. This decentralized and community-first model not only enhances user trust, but also lays the foundation for attracting developers and long-term supporters. At the same time, Movement maintains close communication with developers through channels such as Telegram, and helps teams in the ecosystem grow rapidly by holding AMAs, marketing and financial support.

Community culture is also what Movement has always emphasized in the interview. In the world of Web3, communities are gradually becoming the core driving force for project success. "Community is the lifeline of any project. Without a community, you might as well give up." Cooper pointed out in an interview that even with top technology, projects will be difficult to survive without anyone using it. Looking back at the history of the crypto market, some networks and tokens, despite their mediocre technology, have maintained prices and relevance with strong community support. This shows that in today's environment of fierce competition between chains, technology is of course important, but the activity and loyalty of the community are the key to victory. Especially now that there are too many chains competing for the same users, if everyone is competing for the same users, in my opinion, the key lies in who can best identify and reward their users, and who can build the most organic and active community. Not just building cool technology, but giving people a thing to believe in, something to participate in. Movement I think it's great for people to realize this and I believe that ultimately this will bring a better experience to users in this industry.

It is precisely for community considerations that, unlike many crypto projects that choose to issue tokens after the main network is launched, Movement completed TGE (token generation event) before the main network is launched. Cooper pointed out in the interview that any network that starts from scratch often faces the potential risks of concentrated power and malicious behavior. Pre-issued tokens help to achieve network decentralization before formal launch and ensure smooth operation. This strategy has also been strongly supported by the community and partners, and the market is in a relatively positive state. Cooper admitted, “In retrospect, this timing is almost perfect, helping us gain a better position in the current tough market.”

Bets from the Trump family, bluntly stated that cryptocurrency regulation

has not changed substantially

Trump's friendly attitude and loose policy expectations in the cryptocurrency field provide the industry with greater room for development, including projects such as Movement, which may usher in more room for development.

Cooper commented, “As a founding team in the United States, we are excited about this 'new-centrism' vision. All our efforts—expanding the user base, bringing users from key emerging markets—are closely related to the strategic interests of the United States. These markets are crucial to the United States because they are not only the frontiers of financial expansion, but also a place for competition for the dominance of the dollar. We have received a lot of support in this regard.”

However, Cooper also admitted that although optimism about the future really exists, changes in crypto-regulation are not achieved overnight. "So far, the regulatory environment has not actually changed substantially, which is one of the reasons why the market has cooled slightly recently. The excitement is real, but the implementation of policies will take time. The current regulatory framework is the result of decades of evolution and cannot be changed overnight. However, we believe that the US regulation in the crypto field will gradually turn positive in the next four years. Whether it is driving the return of local teams or providing more support for cryptocurrencies, it will bring new opportunities to the industry."