Analysts Dismiss Jane Street’s Bitcoin Scam, Demand for Bitcoin ETF Rises

This week, rumors of a “10 a.m. Bitcoin dump” at quantitative trading firm Jane Street gained traction online after Terraform Labs was sued by a court-appointed administrator, but market watchers said the data did not support a consistent, company-led selloff.

The lawsuit comes a day after Jane Street was indicted by a Terraform Labs administrator on insider trading charges that fueled the collapse of the Terra Algorithm stablecoin ecosystem in May 2022.

Elsewhere in the market, demand for bitcoin exchange traded funds rebounded after five consecutive weeks of net negative inflows. U.S.-listed bitcoin ETFs have taken in more than $1 billion in three straight days this week, with $254 million in total inflows on Thursday, according to data from Farside Investors.

Corporate ether treasuries are also under pressure. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the leader of corporate Ether (ETH), has been seen in the market crash, experiencing a paper loss of $8.8 billion.

Analysts reject Jane Street's “10 am dump” claim, saying bitcoin is not easily manipulated.

Cryptocurrency investors have accused the quantitative trading company Jen Street of pressing the price of Bitcoin with daily, programmatic sell-off in the US market open, but market analysts and data point out that the pattern is not consistent, and no single company can force Bitcoin into a long bear market.

The claims came a day after Terraform Labs court-appointed administrator Jane Street sued, alleging insider trading related to transactions that fueled the collapse of the Terra Algorithm stablecoin ecosystem in May 2022.

A number of market watchers, including crypto influencer Justin Bechler, have argued that Jane Street could cover a net short Bitcoin position in a hedge that does not appear in public records, known as BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust exchange-traded fund (ETF). Bachelor Jane Street's integrated algorithm runs Bitcoin sales at 10 a.m. EST every day, arguing to buy ETFs at a discount to the price of Bitcoin (BTC).

“When Jane Street reports that it holds $790 million in IBIT shares, it tells you nothing about whether these shares are covered, shorted, or wrapped in a collar that makes the company's net Bitcoin exposure zero or negative,” Bechler wrote.

Julio Moreno, Head of Research at CryptoQuant, cautioned that Bechler's reported activity is not limited to one company. Buying spot exposure while selling futures is a common approach for delta-neutral funds that want to capture spreads rather than directional price movements, he said.

Jane Street's most recent 13-F filing revealed its holdings in Strategy, as well as top positions in Bitcoin mining companies BitFarms, Cipher Mining and Hat8.

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Vitalik sells 17,000 ETH in one month after raising $45 million for privacy

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has reduced his Ether balance by 17,000 ETH in a month after announcing plans to allocate $45 million worth of tokens to privacy projects.

Arkham-tracked Buterin wallets held around 241,000 Ether (ETH) in early February, before a series of flows reduced it to 224,000 ETH on Tuesday.

The decline came as Buterin continued to sell off, including $6.6 million worth of 2,961 ethers in a three-day period earlier in the month. This has recently accelerated, with OnChain analysts reporting that it sold $7 million worth of tokens in three days.

According to data from Arkham Intelligence, ETH sales are based on a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator CoW protocol using multiple small swaps rather than one large transaction, which is typically used to reduce market impact.

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When the ether slump tests the cyclical thesis, the loss of bituminous paper is close to 8.8 billion dollars

Corporate Ether treasuries are coming under pressure as the crypto crash deepens, with analysts warning the market is nearing a make-or-break point for Ether's investment case.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies, one of the largest corporate owners of Ether (ETH), is sitting on a modest loss as ETH trades well below the company's average purchase price, according to third-party tracker Bitminetracker. Some estimates put Bitmine's paper losses at $8.8 billion after Ether's slide in recent months.

ETH's price has fallen 60% in the past six months, falling well below Bitmine's average cost base of $3,843, Bitminetracker data shows.

Crypto research outlet 10x Research said Monday that Ether is now trading near valuation and price-specific levels that test whether the asset is in a cyclical downturn or entering deeper structural weakness.

“Therefore, investors should carefully consider whether the asset is simply in a cyclical downturn or entering a phase of deep structural impairment.”

Bitmine continues to buy ETH despite paper losses. Last week Bitmin gained 45,749 Ether at an average price of $1,992 per ETH, showing confidence in the world's largest Ether treasury.

Big Wall Street participants are maintaining exposure to Bitmine even as the market declines.

The top 11 bitcoin shareholders, including Morgan Stanley, Arch Investment Management and asset manager BlackRock, all increased their exposure to the company in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Bitmine's share price has fallen 59% in the past six months and was trading at $19.68 in premarket trading on Monday, according to Google Finance data.

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In the midst of institutional expansion, Ave exceeded $1 trillion in loans

Decentralized finance protocol Aave has surpassed $1 trillion in aggregate loan volume, the first historic mark in the DeFi industry.

“Ten years ago, Diffie and Ave did not exist. There were only ideas. Today, Aave stands as the backbone of on-chain lending, developing a new financial system that is open, global and unstoppable,” Stany Kulekov, CEO of Ave Labs, said on XPost on Wednesday.

This operation marks another step towards Aev's goal of becoming “the largest and most efficient liquid network in the world,” Kulekov added. “Builders, banks and fintechs will plug into default, fundamentally improving liquidity and cost structures in global finance.”

In August, Aave Labs launched Ave Horizon, a new lending marketplace on Ethereum specifically for stablecoin lending to traditional financial firms and other institutional investors.

VanEck, WisdomTree and Securitize were among the first participants to use Aave's institutional offering.

In the year On February 15, Kulekov said that DeFi lending could benefit from tokenization of “abundant assets” such as solar, energy storage batteries and robotics for labor. In the year By 2050, those assets are expected to be worth a total of $50 trillion.

Kulekov originally launched Ave as ETHLend in November 2017 before rebranding to Aave in September 2018. It now has more than $27.2 billion in total value locked in, allowing users to earn interest on deposits and borrow instantly using crypto as collateral.

Aave leads a number of prominent DeFi lending platforms at TVL, including Morpho, JustLend, SparkLend, Maple, Kamin Lend and Compound Finance, each of which has more than $1 billion in total value locked in.

Ave generated over $83.3 million in payouts in the last 30 days, nearly four times that of its next closest competitor, Morpho.

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Curve Founder Says Defy Should Drop Launch Token For Real Income

Decentralized finance (DeFi) cannot rely on inflationary token incentives to sustain growth, said Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Egorov said that protocols should generate real income instead of relying on emissions to attract liquidity.

“Your product should not be from tokens, but from earnings,” Egorov told Cointelegraph. “You need real income,” he added, adding that “if a token doesn't do something, you're probably better off not doing a token.”

Egorov compared the current environment to the “DeFi winter” of 2020, where even triple-digit and 1,000% annual percentage rates have attracted capital to new protocols. At the time, he said, speculative premiums generated token prices and total value locked (TVL) for protocols.

“Currently, news does not change the value of tokens,” he told Cointelegraph, arguing that users “reassess the risk.”

His comments come as DeFi's TVL has fallen about 38 percent in the past six months, according to Defillama. According to data from the analytics platform, TVL fell to $98 billion as of Monday from $158 billion on August 23, 2025.

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Overview of the DeFi market

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.

The PIPPIN token was the week's biggest gainer of the 100, up 55%, followed by the DCR token, which surged more than 44% last week.

Thanks for reading this week's roundup of the most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and lessons about this dynamic and evolving space.