Bitcoin (BTC) climbed over 10% today, February 25, 2026, nearing USD 70,000 due to, in part, speculation from a lawsuit against a Cleveland-based quantitative trading firm, Jane Street. The trustee for the bankrupt Terraform Labs filed suit against the trading firm, claiming that it used insider information obtained from a private message from a former intern to liquidate its position before the collapse of Terra Luna in 2022, thereby avoiding USD 200 million in losses.
The ’10 AM Dumps’ Theory
Due to this legal action, traders immediately began connecting the lawsuit with the disappearance of the persistent market phenomenon of ’10 AM dumps’; traders had been experiencing significant algorithmically-determined sell-offs of Bitcoin (BTC) at exactly 10 AM Est Time, right before the opening of the U.S. stock market.
Since the lawsuit, presented in New York, became public, these “10 AM dumps” have “magically” stopped. Many people in the community believe that Jane Street [a large Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) market maker (MM) and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) shareholder] may have suspended its automated selling strategies.
Crypto commentator Bark summarized the sentiment of a big part of the trading community: “They’ve been running an algorithm dumping Bitcoin at 10 am every single day… They get sued, and it stops. The 10 am dumps are gone. Bitcoin has its best day in months.”
Skepticism and Nuance
Some analysts are cautiously saying to take great care when looking here. Meaning, Jane Street’s strategies may be standard delta-neutral positioning, not manipulation, and that broader market factors contributed to the decline. That said, Jane Street is calling the suit “opportunistic” and “baseless,” but in either case, that, along with the timing, has changed the overall market psychology.
Although the mechanics of these strategies might be controversial, they are widely used by sophisticated traders and large trading firms. At the same time, those frequent pattern dumps are unlikely to disappear completely. To this point, it’s worth noting that an Authorized Participant (AP) like Jane Street in the ETF sector has significant reach and a competitive advantage (which is well known), driven by the unique, low-cost nature of the in-kind creation and redemption process rather than a literal “zero” cost of capital.
But, obviously, the controversy and conspiracy theories have invaded social media. The debate is there, and the surge of Bitcoin as well. Market manipulation is not new, but uncovering such practices brings hope and investors’ optimism to heal, at least a bit, the crypto and overall market.
