With the amount of accusations, it looks like
#JaneStreet entire business model is draining liquidity by crashing markets and profiting from it
This happened not once, but multiple times.
The Indian stock market case is the cleanest documented example of how Jane Street works. They ran something similar to a 10 AM slam algo in india and made $4.23 billion, but got busted and temporarily banned by the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
This is how it works.
INDIAN PLAYBOOK
Between January 2023 and March 2025, Jane Street’s entities in India generated approximately ₹36,502 crore in net profit. On 21 flagged expiry days, SEBI identified ₹4,843.57 crore as alleged unlawful gains. A 105-page interim order was issued. A trading ban followed. The amount was deposited in escrow. Appeals are ongoing.
The important part is not the ban. The important part is the mechanism.
Jane Street operated through:
Jane Street Singapore Pte Ltd (FPI)Jane Street Asia Trading Ltd (FPI, Hong Kong)JSI Investments Pvt Ltd (Indian subsidiary)JSI2 Investments Pvt Ltd (Indian subsidiary)
That separation allowed the visible leg and the profit leg to sit in different entities.
How expiry manipulation works ?
Index options settle based on the final value of the index on expiry day. Small movements on expiry day can generate very large payouts in options.
The strategy described by SEBI worked like this:
Morning Phase (around 9:15 AM – late morning)
The Indian entity aggressively bought Bank Nifty component stocks and futures.Orders were placed in size.On some days, they represented a major percentage of total market volume.
Buying heavy-weight stocks moves the index upward. At the same time, offshore entities built large short options exposure.
Selling calls.Buying puts.Net exposure is heavily bearish.
The options position was several times larger than the stock position in delta terms. That shows the stock buying was not the main bet. It was the setup.
Afternoon Phase (late morning to close)
After building the options book, the Indian entity reversed the flow. They sold the same stocks and futures in size.
Selling pressure pushed the index down. If the index closes near certain strikes, the short calls expire worthless and the puts gain value.
Stock shows modest loss. Options shows large profit.
Example SEBI Showed:
₹4,370 crore of buying in the morning.Options delta exposure expanded massively.₹61.6 crore loss in cash/futures.₹734.93 crore profit in options.
Net gain: ₹673.33 crore in one day.
The cash market activity influenced the settlement level. The derivative book captured the real money. That is the India playbook: Use capital in the underlying to influence the derivative payout.
2) 10 AM MANIPULATION PLAYBOOK
Now
$BTC .
For months, repeated sell pressure appeared around 10 AM Eastern Time. This time window is important:
US markets open.Liquidity increases.Large orders can be executed efficiently.Derivatives markets are active.
Observed pattern:
Sudden downward move. Liquidations of leveraged long positions. Cascading forced selling. Later stabilization.
Crypto markets are highly leveraged. A 2–3% drop is enough to wipe out large amounts of long exposure.
When liquidation engines activate:
Exchanges auto sell collateral.Market orders hit the book.Price drops further.More liquidations trigger.
If a large trading firm sells aggressively into this window: It can initiate the first move. Liquidations amplify it. The cascade does part of the work.
After forced selling clears, price often rebounds.
The similarity to India is structural:
In India, the index was moved to influence option payout. In crypto, spot movement can influence derivative liquidation and futures positioning.
The underlying move is the trigger. The derivatives are the profit engine.
One more detail matters. After the Terraform lawsuit was filed on February 23, 2026, the 10 AM pattern stopped.
Instead of a selloff,
$BTC rallied. Shorts were liquidated instead of longs. When a repeated mechanical pattern disappears exactly when legal pressure appears, market participants take notice.
3) THE BTC ANGLE, WAS THE LUNA COLLAPSE USED TO FORCE A DISCOUNT?
In May 2022, Terra’s UST stablecoin collapsed from a $40 billion ecosystem to zero within days. The peg broke, panic accelerated, and Bitcoin reserves meant to defend the system were deployed under extreme stress.
Beyond the peg break itself, there is another structural possibility raised by the lawsuit.
Terraform Labs was using Bitcoin reserves to defend UST’s peg. If UST destabilized, those reserves would have to be deployed immediately.
That means selling or pledging
$BTC under urgent conditions. Urgent conditions remove bargaining power.
The lawsuit alleges:
Jane Street knew liquidity in the Curve pool had been reduced.An 85M UST sale was executed into that thinner liquidity.The peg destabilized rapidly.During the crisis, Jane Street was in direct contact with Do Kwon.Discussions reportedly included buying BTC at heavy discounts, potentially $200M–$500M.
If Terraform was forced to defend the peg, they would have had to mobilize BTC quickly. If someone knew that pressure was coming, increasing stress on UST would accelerate that moment.
More pressure on the peg means:
Faster reserve deploymentWeaker negotiating positionDiscounted BTC access
The possibility raised is simple:
Was the collapse merely a trading event, or was it used as leverage to acquire BTC reserves at distressed prices?
These are allegations in an active lawsuit. But the sequence of events makes the incentive structure clear.
4) Now the ETFs.
Jane Street became an authorized participant for major Bitcoin ETFs. Authorized participants sit inside creation and redemption mechanics.
They can:
Create ETF shares.Redeem ETF shares.Hedge through futures.Write options.Arbitrage spreads.
Public 13F filings show long
#etf positions. They do not show: Short futures, Swaps, Written options, Net exposure after hedging. A reported long position does not automatically mean net long exposure. It can be:
Long ETF shares, Short CME futures, Short options, Paired trades.
The public sees the visible leg. The full derivatives book remains invisible. Now combine that with repeated spot selling patterns.
If spot is pressured at specific windows while ETF exposure grows, the visible data does not reveal the full strategy.
In India, stock trades were visible. Options exposure was the real profit driver. In ETFs, share holdings are visible. Derivatives positioning may not be. The structural similarity is opacity between visible and invisible legs.
5) MOST IMPORTANT, THEIR TRADING TECH IS REDACTED
The Millennium Lawsuit, The $1 Billion Strategy That Was Sealed. The Millennium lawsuit is not a side story. It is the technical core of this entire structure.
In early 2024, two senior traders left Jane Street:
Doug Schadewald senior index options traderDaniel Spottiswood his direct report
They joined Millennium Management. Soon after, Jane Street sued Millennium in Manhattan federal court, accusing it of stealing an immensely valuable proprietary trading strategy.
During court proceedings, a critical detail became public: The strategy focused on India index options and generated approximately $1 billion in profit in 2023 alone.
That number changes the scale of the conversation. This was not a small arbitrage idea. It was a major profit engine.
What the lawsuit exposed ?
The lawsuit made three things clear:
The strategy was options driven.It operated in India’s index derivatives market.It was extremely profitable and repeatable.
However, almost everything about how it worked was removed from public view. Large sections of court filings were redacted. The public did not see:
The algorithm that generated the signalsThe execution timing modelThe strike selection frameworkThe delta exposure managementThe cross entity coordination processThe risk control systems
The only visible number was the profit. The engine itself remained hidden.
The defense arguments:
Millennium argued that India’s options market structure was publicly documented and that the strategy was not uniquely secret.
The departing traders claimed the system was built on experience and expertise, not on hidden automated models. This creates a critical distinction:
If the edge was purely structural, then anyone could replicate it.
If the edge was execution based timing, coordination, size management, layered derivatives then the system itself is the asset. Execution systems can be redeployed.
Why this lawsuit triggered regulators ?
The lawsuit did something unintended. It publicly revealed that a single trading strategy was generating around $1 billion annually in India.
That exposure led to media coverage. Media coverage led to regulatory scrutiny. Regulatory scrutiny led to SEBI’s investigation.
The later SEBI interim order described an expiry day structure where:
Cash trades influenced index movementA larger options book captured the payoff
The existence of the $1B strategy made that investigation inevitable. The case settled in December 2024. Terms were undisclosed. No full trial occurred. No detailed strategy blueprint was released.
The mechanics remained sealed.
Why the redactions matter ?
The importance of the redactions is structural. A $1 billion options strategy:
Operated across multiple entitiesRelied on derivatives layeringWas defended aggressively in federal courtHad its internal mechanics removed from public view
The same firm later: Faced SEBI accusations of expiry-day manipulation, Was named in a Terra-related lawsuit, Acts as an authorized participant for major Bitcoin ETFs, Holds large ETF positions where derivative offsets are not publicly disclosed.
The internal trading system the execution layer is not visible in public filings. Public reports show positions.
They do not show execution logic. Court filings show accusations. They do not show algorithm code. Regulatory orders show outcomes. They do not reveal proprietary models.
When a firm’s most profitable system remains classified while similar structural patterns appear in other markets, scrutiny is confirmed.
If a firm can:
Move underlying markets with size. Layer larger derivative exposure behind it. Capture settlement-level influence. Coordinate across entities. Sit inside ETF plumbing. Keep the execution system sealed
Then surface level data will never show the full picture.
A Firm that comes at the centre of every market Manipulation event ?
Sam Bankman Fried worked at Jane Street for roughly three years before founding Alameda Research and later
#FTX . In April 2021, FTX invested $500 million into Anthropic for an approximate 8% stake.
In May 2022, Terra and UST collapsed. Alameda reportedly suffered significant losses during that broader crypto unwind. FTX later entered bankruptcy.
During FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings in 2023–2024, its Anthropic stake was sold at valuations approaching $18 billion.
Jane Street was 2nd largest buyer in that round, purchasing roughly $100 million in shares. So the capital sequence looks like this:
A former Jane Street trader builds FTXFTX invests early in AnthropicFTX collapsesThat Anthropic stake is liquidatedJane Street acquires part of it which is now worth $2.1 billion
In 2024, Trump Media & Technology Group formally wrote to Nasdaq alleging potential naked short selling activity and cited Jane Street among firms responsible for a large share of trading volume during a sharp decline in its stock. No formal charges followed, but the firm was publicly named in that dispute.
Add this to :
• SEBI’s interim order in India alleging expiry day index manipulation and impounding roughly $570M
• The Millennium lawsuit revealing a redacted India options strategy that generated approximately $1B in one year
• The active Terra lawsuit alleging insider trading tied to the UST collapse
• Jane Street’s role as an authorized participant for major Bitcoin ETFs
• Its position as one of the largest buyers of IBIT
Across equities, derivatives, crypto, ETFs, and private AI equity rounds, the same firm repeatedly appears during:
Market Manipulations. Liquidity stress. Regulatory scrutiny. Distressed capital events.
None of these individual events establish coordinated misconduct.
But here is the uncomfortable reality:
When major market disruptions occur, Jane Street is often present.
Is that simply what happens when one of the largest quantitative trading firms in the world operates across every major asset class?
Or is it something more structural a firm whose positioning naturally benefits from manipulation or crisis?
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
#bullishleo #JaneStreet10AMDump