Bitcoin Manipulation By Jane Street? Ex-Wall | Crypto News
The latest Jane Street debate on X is assembly a blunt rebuttal from Ari Paul. The BlockTower founder, who says he used to work as a Wall Street market maker 15 years in the past, argues that Bitcoin’s failure to push greater is better explained by spot sell-side than by a long-running suppression marketing campaign.
Paul’s reply was direct. “In short: no,” he wrote, before including that market makers do “game the system” in many methods, but that in liquid merchandise such as BTC ETFs, the impact is normally restricted to “meaningful but small costs to consumers,” not a lasting distortion of the underlying asset price. He framed the excellence as one between short-term microstructure video games and a broader declare that one firm stored Bitcoin from reaching far greater ranges.
Bitcoin Manipulation? Small Moves, Fast Reversions
To make that case, Paul pointed to the type of conduct merchants on desks know effectively. “For example, market makers may manipulate the price to run stop limit orders,” he wrote. “But that’s typically on an intraday timeframe. So they might run an asset like MSFT or BTC 2% in a weak market to trigger stops, then a few seconds or minutes later, the price is mostly back to where it was before.” In his telling, that is still manipulation, but it’s not the same as structurally pinning Bitcoin below some imagined truthful worth for months.
That argument lands against a more conspiratorial narrative now circulating online, why Bitcoin just isn’t already at $150,000. Paul’s pushback doesn’t deny that large Wall Street corporations can form short-term trading circumstances. It rejects the stronger declare that such exercise is the central rationalization for Bitcoin’s broader price path.
Paul’s core level was a lot less dramatic. “Why is BTC down? Because OGs sold tens of thousands of coins, and not enough people wanted to buy them.” That line carefully matched the view from famend on-chain analyst James Check, who argued that “Jane Street didn’t suppress the Bitcoin price” and that “HODLers all did,” by promoting large quantities of spot into the market.
Jane Street didn’t suppress the Bitcoin price of us.
HODLers all did.
It’s just not that laborious, stop summoning your inside 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
He added: “My point has always been the same; manipulation is a thing that has always, will always, and is indeed the literal job of large wall street firms. However, you do not need that as the central argument to explain why the price didn’t go higher, nor why it went lower. That can be well and truly explained by looking at spot sell-side.”
Paul did go away room for exceptions. He wrote that there are uncommon instances where Wall Street manipulates an asset in major methods over a longer period, but said those instances are unusual because they’re dangerous and tougher to revenue from than people assume.
“There are rare exceptions where Wall Street manipulates an asset in major ways longer term, but this is quite rare because it’s very risky and not as easy as it looks to profit. 99% of the time that an asset isn’t moving like you want and people are crying “manipulation”, it’s best to embrace the cognitive dissonance, keep away from the “easy way out” of blaming manipulation,” Paul wrote.
That leaves the current Jane Street argument in a narrower body. Yes, large corporations can affect intraday flows, liquidity, and execution high quality. But based on Paul’s account, that is a long approach from proving that one market maker is the rationale Bitcoin just isn’t trading materially greater.
Notably, the Jane Street principle picked up recent consideration after Terraform Labs’ wind-down administrator sued the firm in Manhattan federal court, alleging insider trading tied to Terra’s 2022 collapse. The grievance says Jane Street used a personal chat called “Bryce’s Secret” to receive non-public info and alleges an 85 million UST commerce on Curve that helped set off a selloff; Jane Street has denied wrongdoing and called the case opportunistic.
At press time, BTC traded at $66,090.
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