Bloomberg: Jump Trading drops support for Wormhole

Jump Trading spun off the cross‑chain bridge Wormhole into a standalone business, according to Bloomberg.

The market maker acquired the crypto firm Certus One, which built Wormhole, in 2021. The project was part of Jump Crypto.

According to sources, top executives of the cross-chain platform, including CEO Said Badrega and COO Anthony Ramirez, have left to run it as an independent organization.

It is not known how many people left Jump’s crypto unit due to Wormhole, but Bloomberg sources noted that staff had roughly halved from a peak of 150 employees in 2022.

In early February last year, hackers drained 120,000 WETH from the bridge’s pool (~$320 million at the time). Within 24 hours Jump Crypto reimbursed the project’s losses.

In February 2023 the company returned the stolen digital assets with the help of the DeFi platform Oasis.

According to Bloomberg, in recent months Jump Trading has been gradually shrinking its presence in the cryptocurrency industry. The firm cited low trading volumes despite market growth.

But the firm is watching for the potential approval by the SEC for spot cryptocurrency ETFs and expects to ramp up its digital-asset business again if that occurs. Earlier reports indicated Jump Trading’s plan to act as a market maker for BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF.

In May court documents showed that the company earned around $1 billion under a 2022 agreement with Terraform Labs to back the TerraUSD (UST) peg.

Following the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, Jump Crypto employees were questioned as part of the U.S. Department of Justice investigation. No charges were brought.

According to journalist Michael Lewis, the market maker lost $206 million as a result of the FTX bankruptcy.

In May, Jump Trading announced the cessation of cryptocurrency trading in the United States due to regulatory uncertainty.