"Jane Street risk overhang may have sparked the rebound"…Bitcoin’s ‘10AM Slam’ pattern breaks

An analysis suggests that the recent rebound in Bitcoin may have been aided by the easing of risks tied to global trading firm Jane Street.

Well-known macro analyst Roberto Rios wrote on X on the 25th (local time) that Jane Street may have halted its algorithmic selling strategy in the Bitcoin market amid recently raised legal and regulatory risks. “One of the most powerful yet little-known trading firms is facing trouble on two continents,” he said, adding, “as a result, Bitcoin may finally have been set free.”

Earlier, the bankruptcy administrator for Terraform Labs alleged in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan that Jane Street used inside information to front-run trades just before the collapse of TerraUSD in May 2022. According to the complaint, shortly after Terraform Labs withdrew $150 million in UST liquidity from Curve’s 3pool, a wallet linked to Jane Street withdrew $85 million. Jane Street rebutted the allegations as “baseless and opportunistic.”

Rios also cited a case in which the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in July 2025 accused Jane Street of manipulating indices on derivatives expiry days and calculated roughly $580 million in illicit gains, arguing that “the same playbook is repeating.”

He pointed to the so-called ‘10AM Slam’ pattern—repeated waves of heavy selling in Bitcoin and spot ETFs at 10 a.m. Eastern, shortly after the U.S. stock market opens—since November 2025. Given that Jane Street is one of the authorized participants (APs) for BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, he argued there may be structural selling that exploits the ETF creation-and-redemption mechanism.

Rios stressed that the pattern has not appeared since the Terraform lawsuit was filed. “For the first time since the lawsuit was filed, Bitcoin did not plunge right after the U.S. open,” he said, explaining that “once the selling pressure disappeared, prices rebounded.”

In fact, on the 25th Bitcoin rose more than 3% to regain $68,000, while about $323 million worth of short positions were liquidated. On the same day, spot Bitcoin ETFs saw net inflows of $257.7 million.

Still, Rios noted that “correlation does not imply causation,” acknowledging that multiple factors—such as entering oversold territory, short covering, and political events—may also have played a role. “The ETF structure has increased institutional access, but it has also granted authorized participants privileged access to the market plumbing,” he added, “which could recreate the problems of the legacy financial system that Bitcoin sought to replace.”