Written by: Justin Bechler

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Bitcoin should now be at least $150,000; everyone knows this.

But why is the actual price not reaching that? A federal lawsuit filed yesterday in Manhattan provides the answer.

Let us connect three things for the first time: a federal insider trading case involving a private group chat called "Bryce's Secret"; a set of procedures that continuously strike down and suppress Bitcoin prices at 10 AM until the end of 2025; and an undisclosed derivatives ledger—it could have made the world's largest Bitcoin ETF holdings a tool for suppressing Bitcoin.

All three clues point to the same name: Jane Street Capital.

Intern

This story begins with an intern named Bryce Pratt.

Bryce interned at Terraform Labs, a Singapore company behind the algorithmic stablecoin UST and its token Luna. In September 2021, he left Terraform to join Jane Street as a full-time employee.

Jane Street is also where SBF learned trading, later founding FTX and Alameda Research. Many of his colleagues either came from Jane Street or were closely related to it.

According to the lawsuit filed by Terraform's bankruptcy administrator Todd Snyder, Bryce became a bridge between his old employer and new employer through a chat group—this group was called "Bryce's Secret" in court documents.

The lawsuit alleges that Jane Street gained significant confidential information about Terraform's internal funding dynamics through this group.

A critical moment was on May 7, 2022. Terraform withdrew $150 million UST from a decentralized trading platform called Curve 3pool—this was the main liquidity pool for the stablecoin. Within ten minutes of the withdrawal, with no public announcement from Terraform, a wallet associated with Jane Street withdrew $85 million UST from this pool.

The following events are well known. Selling pressure caused UST to begin to decouple, and within days, Luna’s algorithmic mechanism went completely out of control, resulting in a crazy issuance of tokens, a $40 billion market value evaporated, and retail investors lost all their money.

The lawsuit claims that Jane Street precisely liquidated positions "just hours before the collapse of the Terraform ecosystem," avoiding potential losses of over $200 million. The documents clearly state: these trades "could not have been executed without insider information."

Jane Street's response is that the lawsuit is "ridiculous," "unfounded," asserting that the losses incurred by Terra and Luna holders were caused by Terraform's own fraud.

By the way, Do Kwon is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence. Snyder also sued Jump Trading on the same grounds, seeking $4 billion in damages—it appears this is a systematic investigation of institutional behaviors during the Terra collapse, not just targeting Jane Street.

The Clock Starts Ticking

Starting from the end of 2024, by 2025, Bitcoin prices exhibited a phenomenon that left traders puzzled:

Every day at 10 AM (Eastern Time), just as the US stock market opens, Bitcoin would be met with a violent sell-off. This drop is very precise, clearly done by a program, and the magnitude is absurd, having no relation to the overall market trend. It specifically bursts high-leverage longs, triggering a chain of liquidations, and then within hours, the price rebounds.

The founders of blockchain analysis company Glassnode recorded this pattern. After tracking trading data for several months, they found this rule to be unmistakably apparent. Charts from last December showed that just minutes after the Bitcoin market opened at 10 AM, it dropped from $89,700 to $87,700, instantly evaporating $171 million in long positions, before slowly rising back up again.

It happened every day without fail.

As a designated market maker and authorized participant for multiple Bitcoin ETFs, Jane Street has cash holdings and the infrastructure for large-scale sell-offs. Timing a sell-off when liquidity is thinnest can depress prices, triggering a chain of liquidations for leveraged traders, and then buy back at lower prices. This operation flows smoothly: first create a drop, then buy the dip.

Then something interesting happened.

The founders of Glassnode noted that just after the Terraform lawsuit documents were made public early last year, this daily flash crash stopped. Bitcoin prices stabilized significantly. This is not a coincidence—clearly, the company suddenly realized that lawyers were coming to audit.

But this stability did not last long. In the third quarter of 2025, the 10 AM sell-off returned, and by the end of the year, it fully regained its former "style."

In short: Jane Street dared not sell during the period when lawyers were watching, and resumed selling after the storm had passed.

Quantitative Machines

In the 13F filings for the fourth quarter of 2025, Jane Street disclosed that it held over 20.31 million shares of IBIT (BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF), valued at approximately $790 million. In that quarter alone, it increased its holdings by 7.1 million shares, worth $276 million. At one point last year, its total IBIT holdings approached $2.5 billion.

Meanwhile, it aggressively bought MicroStrategy stocks, increasing its holdings by 473%, totaling over 950,000 shares, valued at approximately $121 million. In contrast, BlackRock and Vanguard were selling MicroStrategy stocks, offloading billions.

Many crypto media outlets saw this 13F filing and said, "Wow, institutions are getting in!" But those who truly understand market structure saw that something was off.

Doesn’t this look like a bullish stance on Bitcoin, accumulating positions? If only you understood what Jane Street actually does.

Jane Street is one of the rare four firms allowed to "create and redeem physical IBIT," the other three being Virtu Americas, JPMorgan, and Marex. It is also an authorized participant for Fidelity and WisdomTree Bitcoin ETFs. What does this status mean? It means they can directly access the conduit that connects ETF prices with real Bitcoin. They can enter and exit ETFs with real Bitcoin, arbitraging between fund prices and spot prices, while hoarding assets that ordinary people could never accumulate.

In other words, Jane Street holds the "pipeline" connecting Bitcoin ETFs and real Bitcoin, while others do not.

Invisible Ledger

Former hedge fund manager Michael Green says those interpreting Jane Street's 13F filings as bullish make him feel "uneasy." He points out that Jane Street's IBIT holdings are "almost certainly offset by undisclosed options and futures positions," "they are absolutely not accumulating Bitcoin; this is standard market-making practice."

Former proprietary trader Ryan Scott is even more direct: "Anyone who takes this as good news is practically a 'death row inmate' in the financial world. This should be understood as: 'Guess who else holds unreported hedging derivatives?'"

Nicholas Batia summed it up: Jane Street holds IBIT to sell options, arbitrage, and engage in various fast-paced quantitative trades.

What does this mean for everyone holding Bitcoin or IBIT?

The 13F filing only discloses long stock positions and does not require the disclosure of options, futures, or swaps. So when Jane Street claims to hold $790 million worth of IBIT stocks, you have no idea whether those stocks are hedged with put options, offset with short futures, or packaged in some options strategy—it is possible that their actual risk exposure to Bitcoin is zero, or even negative (i.e., short).

The public only sees them buying, buying, buying. But their actual position is likely a huge short—because that half that’s hedged, according to current disclosure rules, we cannot see at all.

The 13F is like a photo taken from the waist up, with the other half unknown, only Jane Street knows what that looks like.

So every Bitcoin holder must ask an unavoidable question: if Jane Street is holding $790 million in IBIT and has hedged that with $790 million in put options or short futures, then the net position is zero. If its derivatives positions are larger than the stock positions, then the net position is negative—which means that if Bitcoin drops, they actually make money.

In this case, they have ample motivation to leverage their privileged status as authorized participants to hammer down spot prices, triggering others' liquidations and earning the margin in between.

The question arises: is Jane Street bullish or bearish on Bitcoin? Under the current disclosure rules, it is not required to answer.

Precedents

Jane Street's actions in the Bitcoin market have not been scrutinized by regulators, but in other markets, it has faced scrutiny.

In 2025, the Securities and Exchange Board of India issued a 105-page penalty order, accusing Jane Street of manipulating BANKNIFTY index options in the Indian market.

The Indian Securities and Exchange Board found that Jane Street made 365 billion rupees (about $4.3 billion) over two years through coordinated trading in the spot and derivatives markets, earning 73.5 billion rupees (about $880 million) in just one day. The regulator stated clearly: such behavior is illegal in any country with normal financial regulation. They then restricted Jane Street's trading activities.

See how it operated in India's index derivatives: using speed and scale advantages to cause disruptions in one market, then harvesting profits in the derivatives market above it.

Now the question is, is the Bitcoin market the same?

21 Million

The hard limit of 21 million is maintained by a network of Bitcoin nodes distributed worldwide.

But for this cap to be meaningful, one premise must be met: price discovery must be real, and the market reflects genuine supply and demand. Institutions holding Bitcoin or Bitcoin-related products must genuinely believe in it, rather than treating it as "raw materials" for unseen derivative strategies.

In other words, the 21 million cap only has meaning if based on the foundation that "the market is honest."

And what about now?

Jane Street is one of four companies that hold the keys to Bitcoin ETF infrastructure. It is currently being federally prosecuted, accused of insider trading that robbed $40 billion in market value. It is accused of programmatically pressing Bitcoin prices for several months. It holds the largest public ETF positions while also maintaining a derivatives ledger—that ledger might make it appear bullish, but in reality, it could be bearish.

Therefore, the 21 million cap is just a number in front of Jane Street. Because it can create "synthetic" Bitcoin infinitely above its ETF inventory through undisclosed derivatives.

Bitcoin is indeed scarce at the protocol level, but the price discovery mechanism that operates above it has been ruined by a company treating its privileges like an ATM. And the current disclosure rules allow it to continue doing so, unseen by anyone.

Every Bitcoin holder should know the answer: what is Jane Street's actual position—long or short?

Before knowing this, it is not the market that determines Bitcoin prices, but Jane Street.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。