Did you know that Bitcoin actually had the opportunity to break through $150,000 a long time ago, but the price has not been able to rise? Some suspect that there are large institutions manipulating it — Jane Street Capital.
The story begins with an intern named Bryce Pratt. He previously worked at Terraform Labs and later joined Jane Street. According to the lawsuit, he passed important internal information from Terraform to Jane Street through a group called 'Bryce’s Secret,' allowing them to act first at critical moments.
In May 2022, Terraform withdrew $150 million UST from the Curve liquidity pool, and 10 minutes later, Jane Street's related wallet withdrew $85 million. As a result, UST depegged, Luna collapsed, and approximately $40 billion in market value evaporated. The lawsuit claims that these operations could only be accomplished with insider information, allowing Jane Street to avoid a $200 million loss. Jane Street denies the allegations, stating that they are 'baseless.' Terraform founder Do Kwon is currently serving a prison sentence.
Even more bizarrely, starting from the end of 2024, Bitcoin suddenly drops every day at 10 AM (when the U.S. stock market opens), causing many highly leveraged long positions to be liquidated, and the price slowly recovers a few hours later. Blockchain analysis company Glassnode tracked data for several months and found that this pattern is highly regular, clearly resembling programmatic manipulation.
Interestingly, at the beginning of 2025, when the official lawsuit documents regarding Jane Street's use of insider information were disclosed, this 'flash crash at 10 AM' temporarily stopped. In other words, institutions in the market saw that someone was watching their trades, so they were temporarily afraid to use such obvious manipulation methods. A few months later, the situation returned to the previous rhythm.
Some people suspect that there may also be derivatives and ETF operations behind this, intentionally suppressing the price of Bitcoin.
The conclusion is straightforward: the price of Bitcoin may not only be subject to market supply and demand, but also manipulated by large institutions behind the scenes.
