The behavior you observed depends whether you have already selected entities or not.
When there is at least one entity selected and you activate the move/copy tool, you are immediately asked for the reference point of the movement. All already selected entities are moved then.
But when no entities are selected, you are in selection mode after activating move/copy. Then you can select/deselect entities until you press ENTER. Then, after pressing ENTER, you are asked to specify the reference point to continue the action.
So I assume that a missing ENTER is confusing you.
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