The most mysterious money-making machine on Wall Street, smashing Bitcoin at 10 o'clock every day.

The Most Mysterious Money-Making Machine on Wall Street: Daily 10 AM Bitcoin Dump

By Jaleel Plus Six

Reprinted from Mars Finance

Is it just a coincidence once? Maybe. Three times? Perhaps luck. But what about the tenth time?

Starting in late 2025, some traders following Bitcoin trends on Twitter noticed something strange. They reviewed Bitcoin’s intraday charts over the past six months and found a pattern: almost every day around 10 a.m., just after the US 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 chimed in with similar findings: “I’ve noticed that too,” “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 AM Dump Strategy.” Recently, the rumor gained widespread attention again 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 rarely gives media interviews, never flaunts profits publicly, 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—an institution that has earned hundreds of billions through quantitative trading and market-making, with per-employee profits unmatched on Wall Street.

The core allegation in the lawsuit is straightforward: just before the TerraUSD (UST) collapse in 2022, 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 the court documents—pages 29 to 31—spend three pages describing him, for one reason: after leaving Terraform, he didn’t really leave.

He created a private chat group, 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 chat’s purpose was to continuously feed inside information from Terraform 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 effectively 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’s chat group but much earlier—back 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 liquidity support at critical moments. These terms were never made public.

This means their relationship was not just typical market trading but a form of agreement-based benefit binding. This relationship makes insider trading allegations more legally difficult to dismiss—if you have a secret agreement and hold undisclosed internal information from the other party, 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 the peg was increasing, and LFG’s reserves were quietly depleting.

Few knew about this. But Jane Street was one of them.

Ten Minutes Before the $40 Billion Empire Collapsed

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—without any announcement or warning.

At that moment, the move was completely unnoticed externally.

But less than ten minutes later, an address linked to Jane Street, flagged 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 systematically unwound risk—massively reducing UST holdings, adjusting positions, and minimizing net exposure to the Terra ecosystem. Some specific figures are redacted, likely involving trade secrets or evidence not yet public, but blockchain analysis of fund flows 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, another 200 million UST. Over the following days, they accumulated more than 1.9 billion UST and over 90 million Luna. By May 16, UST holdings soared 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 comes from Nansen, an on-chain data analysis firm, which published a report on May 27 titled “On-Chain Evidence: Unveiling the Mystery of TerraUSD’s De-Pegging.” The report didn’t directly name Jane Street but detailed several wallets playing key roles during the de-pegging, including one later linked to Jane Street. The conclusion was twofold: first, these fund movements occurred before the market panic; second, there was a significant time gap between these actions and the publicized collapse.

Suspected Jane Street-Linked Address Extracted 85 Million TerraUSD

The lawsuit also mentions that after the May 7 transactions, Jane Street didn’t stop. They allegedly continued to leverage insider 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.

In India, they did the same

Now, careful researchers have found that after Terra’s lawsuit against Jane Street, the 10 a.m. dump disappeared. This seems to further confirm the “Jane 10 AM Dump Strategy” rumor.

On the other side of the world, Indian regulators have already formed their judgment.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued a 105-page interim order, imposing a record fine of 48.43 billion rupees—about $5.7 billion. This figure is unprecedented in Indian regulatory history, and SEBI’s findings bear a striking resemblance to the allegations in the Terra Luna case.

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

The logic is as follows: first, in the relatively illiquid spot and futures markets, they used large directional orders to artificially push the Bank NIFTY index up or down; once the price reached the target level, they immediately executed counter-trades in highly liquid options markets, trapping retail traders following the trend; finally, they systematically sold off their spot positions, causing the index to fall back, rendering retail options worthless while their own inverse positions soared in value.

SEBI cited a specific example: on January 17, 2024, Jane Street built a $67 million long position in just eight minutes, with trading volume three times that of the second-largest participant, pushing the index up over 1%.

The regulator was blunt, calling Jane Street’s actions “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 textbook example of such behavior. Known for extreme secrecy, it never gives media interviews or boasts publicly. It has amassed enormous wealth through quantitative trading and market-making, enjoying a near-mythical status in the industry. During recruitment seasons, the salaries it offers make top graduates across Wall Street compete fiercely—comparable to the most elite firms.

But at some point, the story around this company started to 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—whose core team largely came from Jane Street—dragged the entire crypto industry into its darkest hour, and its founder SBF 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 it to weapons procurement funds in a coup attempt in South Sudan, though details remain controversial.

Information is power; information signifies hierarchy.

Jane Street’s “record” of misconduct seems more extensive than we thought, and its reputation has indeed taken a hit in recent years. But the lawsuit’s outcome is still pending.

However, the fact that a company appears in so many negative stories is itself a signal.