This week, rumors of a “10 a.m. Bitcoin dump” blamed on quantitative trading company Jane Street gained traction online after it was sued by Terraform Labs’ court-appointed administrator, but market watchers said the data does not support a consistent, company-driven selloff. The accusations mounted a day after Jane Street was sued by Terraform Labs’ administrator amid allegations of insider trading that worsened the collapse of Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem in May 2022. Analysts reject Jane Street “10 a.m. dump” claims, say Bitcoin isn’t easily manipulated. Cryptocurrency investors accused quantitative trading company Jane Street of pressuring Bitcoin’s price with a daily, programmatic sell-off at the US market open, but market analysts and data suggest the pattern is not consistent, and no single company can force Bitcoin into a prolonged bear market.
Bechler argued that Jane Street conducted coordinated algorithmic selling of Bitcoin at 10 a.m. EST daily, manipulating the Bitcoin (BTC) price to buy the ETF at a discount. When Jane Street reports holding $790 million in IBIT shares, the filing tells you nothing about whether those shares are hedged by puts, offset by short futures, or wrapped in a collar that makes the firm’s net Bitcoin exposure zero or even negative, wrote Bechler, adding that the “actual position could be a massive short that looks like a long because the offsetting half of the trade is invisible under current disclosure rules.”
CryptoQuant’s head of research, Julio Moreno, cautioned that the activity Bechler described is not unique to one company. He said buying spot exposure while selling futures is a common approach for delta-neutral funds seeking to capture spreads rather than directional price moves.
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