Unveiling Jane Street: Wall Street's Most Mysterious Money-Making Machine, a Major Catalyst for the BTC Crash

Perhaps the first time was just a coincidence; the third time might be luck. But what about the tenth?

Starting in the second half of 2025, some traders on Twitter who follow Bitcoin trends noticed something strange. They reviewed Bitcoin’s intraday charts from the past six months and found a pattern: almost every day around 10 a.m., just after the U.S. stock market opens and market sentiment is most active, Bitcoin would experience a clean, sharp drop, precisely wiping out the previous gains.

He posted this discovery on Twitter, and unexpectedly, many others who had noticed the same thing commented: “I’ve also noticed this,” “It’s been going on for months,” “This is definitely not a coincidence.”

Financial media outlet ZeroHedge went further, tweeting repeatedly since July last year, directly pointing to the mastermind behind this: one of the main market makers for Bitcoin spot ETFs—Jane Street. After the 10 a.m. dump, Jane Street quietly accumulates positions, holding over $2.5 billion in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF IBIT.

They even named this phenomenon the “Jane 10 a.m. Dump Strategy.” Recently, the rumor gained further traction due to a lawsuit from Terra.

An Intern Named Bryce

Recently, Terraform Labs’ bankruptcy administrator filed a lawsuit in court, naming Jane Street, co-founder Robert Granieri, and two traders—Bryce Pratt and Michael Huang—as defendants.

Jane Street is a very low-profile firm on Wall Street. It never gives media interviews, never flaunts profits, and for a long time, outsiders didn’t even know it existed. But within the financial industry, Jane Street’s name is almost universally known. It’s an institution that has earned hundreds of billions of dollars through quantitative trading and market making, with per-employee profits unmatched on Wall Street.

The core facts in the lawsuit are not complicated: on the eve of the 2022 TerraUSD (UST) collapse, Jane Street used non-public information obtained from insiders to exit their positions early, quietly retreating before the $40 billion Terra ecosystem vanished.

The starting point of this “insider trading” was a young man named Bryce Pratt.

Bryce Pratt was an intern at Terraform, later joining Jane Street. Normally, an internship on a resume is just a minor detail, but pages 29 to 31 of the court filing dedicate three pages to describing him. The reason is clear: he didn’t really leave Terraform after departing.

He created a private group chat, bringing in Terraform’s software engineers and business development leaders, called “Bryce’s Secret.”

The name is straightforward and bold. According to the lawsuit, this group’s purpose was to continuously feed internal Terraform information back to Jane Street. Meanwhile, Bryce also facilitated introductions, connecting Terraform’s business development head with the leader of Jane Street’s “DeFi Department,” and the two began regular discussions under the guise of “exploring strategic investment cooperation.”

From the lawsuit’s perspective, Jane Street essentially turned this communication channel into a backdoor for obtaining major non-public information.

Jane and Terraform: An Unknown History

Going further back.

The relationship between Jane Street and Terraform didn’t start with Bryce Pratt’s group chat but much earlier, in May 2021, when UST first de-pegged.

At that time, UST briefly lost its dollar peg, causing panic across the Terra ecosystem. To stabilize the situation, Terraform Labs began reaching out to institutional traders for large-scale OTC arrangements. Jane Street was one of them.

According to the lawsuit, during this period, Terraform provided Jane Street with large trading limits related to UST and Luna, sometimes offering discounts or structural incentives in exchange for their support in providing liquidity at critical moments. These terms were never made public.

This means the relationship between the two companies was not just ordinary market trading but a form of agreement-based benefit binding. This relationship makes insider trading allegations more difficult to dismiss legally. When you have a secret agreement and possess undisclosed internal information about each other, any trades you make are highly suspicious.

By early 2022, the Terra ecosystem appeared to be thriving: Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) had just been established, holding about $5.5 billion in Luna reserves, plus another $3 billion in other assets, seemingly solid. But beneath this shine, signs of trouble appeared: Anchor’s deposit scale was under pressure, UST’s reliance on its peg was increasing, and LFG’s reserves were rapidly depleting.

Few knew about this, but Jane Street was among them.

Ten Minutes Before the $40 Billion Empire Collapse

On May 7, 2022, at 5:44 p.m. Eastern Time.

Terraform quietly withdrew 150 million TerraUSD from Curve’s 3pool, a liquidity pool used for stablecoin swaps. No announcement, no warning, no public statement.

At the time, this operation was completely unknown to the outside world.

But less than ten minutes after this withdrawal, a wallet linked to Jane Street, identified by on-chain analysts, withdrew 85 million TerraUSD from the same liquidity pool.

The lawsuit further states that Jane Street’s suspicious activity didn’t stop there. Before the obvious de-pegging and market panic, addresses associated with Jane Street had already completed systematic risk reduction, massively reducing UST holdings, adjusting positions, and minimizing exposure to the Terra ecosystem. Some specific figures are redacted, likely involving trade secrets or evidence not yet public, but on-chain fund flow analysis is enough to raise suspicion.

Meanwhile, Terraform and LFG were doing the opposite.

On May 7, Terraform bought over 250 million UST. On May 8, they bought another 200 million. Over the following days, they accumulated more than 1.9 billion UST and over 90 million Luna. By May 16, LFG’s UST holdings surged from about 700,000 to over 1.8 billion, an increase of more than 17 billion; Luna holdings jumped from 1.7 million to over 222 million.

Another piece of evidence is a report published by on-chain analytics firm Nansen on May 27 titled “On-Chain Evidence: Unveiling the Mystery of TerraUSD De-Pegging.” The report didn’t directly name Jane Street but detailed several wallets that played key roles during the de-pegging, including one later linked to Jane Street. The conclusion was twofold: first, these fund movements occurred before market panic became public; second, there was a significant time gap between these operations and the publicized collapse.

Suspected Jane Street Address Extracted 85 Million TerraUSD The lawsuit also mentions that after the May 7 transaction, Jane Street didn’t stop. They allegedly continued to use confidential information obtained from Jump Trading to further trade UST for profit. Jump Trading had previously secretly partnered with Terraform to support the market and ultimately profited billions from the collapse.

They Did the Same in India Now, careful researchers have found that after Terra sued Jane Street, the 10 a.m. dump disappeared. This seems to further confirm the “Jane 10 a.m. Dump Strategy” rumor.

On the other side of the world, in India, regulators have already formed their own judgment of Jane Street.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued a 105-page interim order, imposing a record fine of 48.43 billion rupees (~$5.7 billion). This figure is unprecedented in Indian regulatory history, and SEBI’s findings read like a mirror of the Terra Luna case.

SEBI believes Jane Street implemented a carefully designed “pump-and-dump” strategy in India.

The logic is as follows: first, in the relatively illiquid spot and futures markets, large directional orders are used to artificially push the BANK NIFTY index up or down; once the price reaches the target level, they immediately execute counter-operations in the highly liquid options market, harvesting retail traders following the trend; finally, they systematically offload their spot positions, causing the index to fall back, rendering retail options worthless while their own inverse positions soar in value.

SEBI cited a specific example: on January 17, 2024, Jane Street built a $67 million long position in just 8 minutes, more than tripling the second-largest participant’s volume, and this single order pushed the index up over 1%.

The regulator’s language is blunt, describing Jane Street’s actions as “price manipulation through trading rather than market guidance,” constituting “deliberate, carefully planned, malicious conspiracy and deception,” with the sole aim of misleading the market, especially exploiting inexperienced retail investors.

Jane Street has long been a typical example of such behavior. The company is extremely low-profile, never giving interviews or boasting externally. It has amassed enormous wealth through quantitative trading and market making, earning a near-mythical reputation. During recruitment seasons, its offered salaries make top graduates across Wall Street compete fiercely, rivaling any top-tier firm.

However, from a certain point onward, the story of this company has become more complicated.

In the Terra Luna case, it was accused of using inside information to exit early while Terraform and LFG desperately tried to prop up the market with billions.

In the Indian market, regulators identified it as a systemic manipulator of spot and derivatives prices, preying on ordinary investors.

Alameda Research, the core team behind the FTX-linked Alameda that dragged the entire crypto industry into darkness, had many members from Jane Street, and SBF himself admitted that his market thinking was learned at Jane Street.

Moreover, Jane Street is known for aggressively suing former employees, a rare stance on Wall Street.

An earlier investigation even linked Jane Street to weapon procurement funds involved in a coup attempt in South Sudan, though details remain highly disputed.

The market is not a fairy tale; information is power, and information signifies hierarchy.

Jane Street’s “record” seems more extensive than we imagined, and its reputation has indeed taken a hit in recent years.

While the lawsuit’s outcome is still pending, the fact that a company appears in so many negative stories is itself a signal.