Jane Street Sued for Terraform Crypto Insider Trading
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- Jane Street was sued in Manhattan federal court by Terraform Labs' bankruptcy administrator Todd Snyder, who alleged the firm used "non-public information to front-run trading that hastened the collapse" of Terraform and "unwind hundreds of millions of dollars in potential exposure" hours before the ecosystem imploded.
- The complaint says Jane Street sent Bryce Pratt, a former Terraform intern, to re-establish contact with old colleagues in February 2022 — including via a group chat literally named "Bryce's Secret" — that became a back-channel for material nonpublic information.
- On May 7, 2022, less than 10 minutes after Terraform withdrew 150 million TerraUSD from the Curve3pool liquidity pool, a crypto wallet linked to Jane Street withdrew 85 million TerraUSD from the same pool, the lawsuit alleges — moves whose timing the complaint says wasn't public knowledge.
- Snyder filed a separate $4 billion lawsuit against Jump Trading in December 2025, accusing that firm of market manipulation and self-dealing that helped accelerate the same Terra crash, signaling a broader recovery push on behalf of creditors.
- Terraform co-founder Do Kwon pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December, with the New York judge calling the scheme "a fraud of epic generational scale"; the 2022 collapse sent bitcoin below $20,000 and helped trigger FTX's failure months later.
- The suit names Jane Street, co-founder Robert Granieri, and employees Bryce Pratt and Michael Huang; a Jane Street spokesperson told Bloomberg the case is "desperate" and "a transparent attempt to extract money."
Why it matters: Jane Street — one of the world's most profitable trading firms — now faces a damages suit alleging it profited from inside information during the $40 billion TerraUSD collapse that touched off the 2022 crypto winter and helped bring down FTX. The same administrator already hit Jump Trading with a $4 billion suit in December 2025, meaning Terraform's creditors are now hunting the two dominant crypto market makers for recovery, not just the fraudsters already behind bars.
