This week, rumors of a “10 a.m. Bitcoin dump” blamed on quantitative trading firm Jane Street gained momentum online after it was sued by the court-appointed administrator of Terraform Labs, but market watchers said the data does not support a consistent, company-led sell-off.
The accusations mounted a day after Jane Street was sued by Terraform Labs administrator amid allegations of insider trading that compounded the collapse of Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem in May 2022.
Elsewhere in the market, demand for Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds returned after five straight weeks of negative net outflows. Spot listed in the United States Bitcoin ETFs have been adopted more than $1 billion in three consecutive days this week, with $254 million in cumulative inflows on Thursday, according to Farside Investors data.
Ether corporate treasuries have also been under pressure. The leader in corporate Ether (ETH), Bitmine Immersion Technologies, faced an $8.8 billion paper loss on its holdings amid the current market downturn.
Analysts Dismiss Jane Street ’10am’ Claims, Say Bitcoin Is Not Easy to Manipulate
Cryptocurrency investors have accused quantitative trading firm Jane Street of pressuring the price of Bitcoin with a daily programmatic sell-off at the U.S. market open, but market analysts and data suggest the trend is inconsistent and no firm can force Bitcoin into a prolonged bear market.
Claims rose online a day after Terraform Labs’ court-appointed administrator Jane Street continued.alleging insider trading related to transactions that worsened the collapse of Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem in May 2022.
Several market observers, including crypto influencer Justin Bechler, have argued that Jane Street’s ownership of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust exchange-traded fund (ETF), known as IBIT, could mask a net short position in Bitcoin through hedges that do not appear in public filings. Bechler argued that Jane Street was conducting a coordinated algorithmic sale of Bitcoin every day at 10 a.m. EST, manipulating Bitcoin (BTC) price to buy the ETF at a discount.
“When Jane Street reports holding $790 million in IBIT stock, the filing tells you nothing about whether those shares are covered by puts, offset by short futures, or wrapped in a collar that makes the company’s net Bitcoin exposure zero or even negative,” wrote Bechler, adding that “the actual position could be a massive short position that looks like a long position because the offsetting half of the transaction is invisible under current disclosure rules.”
Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, warned that the activity described by Bechler is not specific to a single company. He said buying spot exposure while selling futures contracts is a common approach for delta-neutral funds seeking to capture spreads rather than directional price movements.
Jane Street’s last 13-F file also disclosed holdings in Strategy, as well as significant positions in Bitcoin mining companies Bitfarms, Cipher Mining and Hut 8.
Vitalik sells 17,000 ETH in a month after spending $45 million on privacy
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reduced his Ether balance by around 17,000 ETH in a month after announcing plans to allocate $45 million worth of tokens to privacy projects.
Buterin’s portfolios follow up by Arkham held approximately 241,000 Ether (ETH) in early February, before a series of outflows reduced the combined balance to 224,000 ETH on Tuesday.
This reduction comes in a context of continued sales of Buterin, notably approximately 2,961 Ether worth $6.6 million over a three-day period earlier in the month. On-chain analysts reported that this accelerated recently when he sold $7 million worth of tokens in three days.
Arkham Intelligence data watch ETH sales were routed via decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator CoW Protocol uses many smaller swaps instead of a single large transaction, a method typically used to minimize market impact.
Bitmine paper loss nears $8.8 billion as Ether crisis tests cyclical thesis
Ether corporate Treasuries are under increasing pressure as the crypto downturn deepens, with analysts warning that the market is approaching a make-or-break phase for Ether’s investment case.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies, one of the largest Ether holding companies (ETH), is sitting on a significant unrealized loss as ETH trades well below the company’s average acquisition price, according to to the third-party tracker Bitminetracker. Some estimates put Bitmine’s paper losses in the $8.8 billion range after Ether’s plunge in recent months.
The price of ETH has fallen 60% over the past six months, well below Bitmine’s average cost base of $3,843 per token, according to data from Bitminetracker.
10x Research Cryptocurrency Research Center said As of Monday, Ether is now trading near valuation and cost basis levels that test whether the asset is simply in a cyclical downturn or entering a period of deeper structural weakness.
“Investors should therefore carefully evaluate whether the asset is simply in a cyclical downturn or entering a deeper structural depreciation phase.”
Bitmine continues to buy ETH despite growing paper losses. Last week, Bitmine acquired 45,749 Ether at an average overall cost of $1,992 per ETH, a sign of confidence from the world’s largest Ether treasury company.
Big players on Wall Street are maintaining their exposure to Bitmine despite the market slowdown.
THE top 11 Bitmin Shareholders including Morgan Stanley, Ark Investment Management and asset manager BlackRock all increased their exposure to the treasury company during the fourth quarter of 2025.
Bitmine’s stock price has fallen about 59% over the past six months and was trading at $19.68 in pre-market trading on Monday. data from Google Finance showed.
Aave Surpasses $1 Trillion in Loan Volume Amid Institutional Expansion
Decentralized finance protocol Aave has surpassed $1 trillion in cumulative lending volume, marking a historic first in the DeFi industry.
“Ten years ago, DeFi and Aave didn’t exist. They were just ideas. Today, Aave is the backbone of on-chain lending, powering a new financial system that is open, global, and unstoppable,” Stani Kulechov, CEO of Aave Labs. said in an X post on Wednesday.
The feat marked another step toward Aave’s goal of becoming “the world’s largest and most efficient liquidity network,” Kulechov added. “The one that manufacturers, banks and fintechs connect to by default, fundamentally improving liquidity and cost structures across global finance. »
In August, Aave Labs spear Aave Horizon, a new lending marketplace on Ethereum, specifically aimed at traditional financial companies and other institutional investors to borrow stablecoins against real-world assets.
VanEck, WisdomTree and Securitize were among the first participants to use Aave’s institutional offering.
On February 15, Kulechov said DeFi lending could benefit from tokenization “assets of abundance,” such as solar power, batteries for energy storage, and robotics for work. He expects these assets to be worth a total of $50 trillion by 2050.
Kulechov initially launched Aave as ETHLend in November 2017 before renaming it Aave in September 2018. It is now secure over $27.2 billion in total value locked, allowing users to earn interest on deposits and borrow instantly using crypto as collateral.
Aave leads several major DeFi lending platforms in TVL, including Morpho, JustLend, SparkLend, Maple, Kamin Lend and Compound Finance, each of which holds over $1 billion in total value locked.
Aave has generated more than $83.3 million in fees over the past 30 days, nearly four times that of its closest competitor, Morpho.
Curve Founder Says DeFi Needs To Abandon Token Issuances To Get Real Revenue
Decentralized finance (DeFi) can no longer rely on inflationary token incentives to support growth, according to Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Egorov said protocols must generate real revenue rather than relying on issuance to attract liquidity.
“Your return should come from revenue, not tokens,” Egorov told Cointelegraph. “You need real income. He added that if a token “doesn’t do something, maybe it’s better that you don’t make a token at all.”
Egorov compared the current environment with the “DeFi summer” of 2020, when triple-digit and even 1,000% annual rates attracted capital to new protocols. He said that at the time, speculative premiums were driving up token prices and initiating total value locked (TVL) for the protocols.
“Right now, the news no longer changes token prices,” he told Cointelegraph, saying users had “reassessed the risks.”
His comments come as DeFi’s TVL has fallen by around 38% over the past six months, according to DefiLlama. Analytics platform data watch TVL went from $158 billion on August 23, 2025 to around $98 billion on Monday.
DeFi Market Overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap ended the week in the green.
The Pippin token (PIPPIN) rose 55% as the week’s biggest gainer in the top 100, followed by the Decred token (DCR), up over 44% over the past week.
Thank you for reading our summary of this week’s most notable DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, ideas and information about this dynamically evolving space.
