Traders blame Jane Street for bitcoin’s prolonged slide

X users link bitcoin’s slide to Jane Street; analysts and data challenge the claim.

On X, a theory gaining traction links bitcoin’s extended correction to actions by investment firm Jane Street. Analysts at Santiment took note.

🤯 Just as crypto was bottoming out Monday, Jane Street lawsuit headlines exploded across crypto media. As this has become mainstream news since, Bitcoin reversed sharply and tagged a local top. We break down the bearish to bullish flip in our deep dive: https://t.co/AnAvpmq5p4 pic.twitter.com/DuraflDInM

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) February 26, 2026

Market watchers claim that since early November the company has been systematically selling digital gold at 10:00 ET. The supposed aim was to push the price lower to buy the ETF.

Back in December the popular X account Whale Factor pointed to a pattern:

“Since November, bitcoin has consistently lost 2–3% within minutes after the US market opens. Many traders see the cause in Jane Street’s huge position in BlackRock’s IBIT—more than $2.5bn.”

After the filing of a lawsuit against the firm by Terraform Labs, other users picked up the manipulation theory. The main reason was the disappearance of morning volatility—at the US market open on February 25 the leading cryptocurrency rose 6%, approaching $69,000.

“As soon as the lawsuit against Jane Street became public, bitcoin’s 10am ‘slam’ miraculously disappeared,” wrote Glassnode co-founders Yann Allemann and Jan Happel via the Negentropic account.

The firm has faced similar accusations before. In June 2025 India’s regulator SEBI banned it from operating in local markets and froze $566m it deemed illicit profit.

According to the agency, from January 2023 to March 2025 Jane Street used a “morning pump, daytime dump” scheme to manipulate the Bank Nifty index on the expiry days of 18 futures contracts.

The case against

Crypto-economist Alex Krüger analysed the data and found no support for the claim that Jane Street was dumping bitcoin. By his calculations, in the first 15 minutes of IBIT trading it fell by roughly 1%, and over the next 30 minutes it rose on average by 0.9%.

Everyone says bitcoin dumps at 10AM every day.

I pulled the data, and it’s not true.

Since Jan 1, IBIT’s cumulative return in the 10:00–10:30 window is +0.9%, and in the 10:00–10:15 window it’s –1%. Noisy, not a systematic dump.

More interesting: the performance pattern in… pic.twitter.com/jboe0eehG0

— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) February 26, 2026

“This is no more than statistical noise, not evidence of a planned dump,” he emphasised.

Crucially, both time windows are closely correlated with the Nasdaq’s moves, Krüger added. Hence bitcoin’s declines at the US open were part of a broader risk-asset move, not the result of Jane Street’s actions.

Jeff Park, ProCap’s investment director and a Bitwise adviser, argues that the debate around the company stems from a misunderstanding of how exchange-traded funds work.

Everyone is asking: “Is Jane Street why Bitcoin isn’t at $150k?”

As expected, the answer is trickier than the question. But it’s also more structurally unsettling than the conspiracy theory itself—and once you understand the actual mechanics, you won’t be able to unsee them👇 pic.twitter.com/iLEeJpDeo4

— Jeff Park (@dgt10011) February 25, 2026

If Jane Street is buying shares, that does not mean it must immediately purchase bitcoin for each one. Large players that create and redeem fund shares (AP — the firm is one of them) operate under a special regulatory regime. At issuance they do not need to buy coins instantly — this is permitted by law and is needed for the market to function “smoothly”.

According to Park, this setup creates a “grey window” in which share creation, hedging and spot trades are not time-bound. That is why even large money inflows into ETFs do not mean the leading cryptocurrency must rise immediately. The absence of buying is not manipulation but the normal mechanics of exchange-traded funds, he concluded.

Ryan McMillin of Merkle Tree Capital added that the structure itself nudges APs toward derivatives. Bitcoin futures are often pricier than spot. Participants can earn that difference by hedging positions rather than buying the asset outright.

“Capital in ETFs grows, but real buying on the exchange does not occur. This keeps the price capped below key levels—where hype could spin the market up. When futures positions are closed, the market plunges sharply. Retail investors see this as a sudden collapse caused by ‘whales’, whereas in fact it is simply the mass unwinding of arbitrage trades,” McMillin explained in a comment to Decrypt.

On-chain analyst and _checkonchain founder James Check also noted that bitcoin holders themselves were chiefly to blame for the prolonged correction.

Jane Street didn’t suppress the Bitcoin price folks.

HODLers all did.

It’s just not that hard, stop summoning your inner salty goldbug but blaming manipulators.

People. Sold. A. Fucktonne. Of. Spot. Bitcoin. https://t.co/CrWgPUzUFP pic.twitter.com/N3VhgYjKhm

— _Checkmate 🟠🔑⚡☢️🛢️ (@_Checkmatey_) February 26, 2026

“It is embarrassingly simple—stop summoning your inner salty gold bug and blaming manipulators,” he wrote.

In the fourth quarter, large investors sold shares of exchange-traded funds based on the leading cryptocurrency in an amount equivalent to 25,098 BTC.