I just saw how accusations against Jane Street are exploding on X, claiming they are systematically manipulating Bitcoin’s price every morning at 10 a.m. ET. The theory sounds convincing on the surface: they sell BTC to lower prices, buy ETFs at a discount, and supposedly have driven the price from 125,000 to 62,000 dollars. But when you look at the real data, the story falls apart pretty quickly.

Alex Kruger and other analysts have been tracking market moves and what they find is completely different from what’s circulating on social media. Returns in the 10:00 to 10:30 ET window show cumulative gains of about 0.9%, while the first 15 minutes record -1%. That’s not evidence of systematic selling—it’s market noise. More importantly, both windows reflect almost exactly the performance of the Nasdaq. This means what you’re seeing isn’t a Jane Street conspiracy, but a general reassessment of risk in more volatile assets.

Now, Jane Street is an authorized participant in spot Bitcoin ETFs, which gives it certain legal privileges. These participants can create and redeem ETF shares, and in the case of Bitcoin they are permitted to do so in-kind, exchanging actual Bitcoin directly rather than just cash. This is where the mechanics get interesting. When there’s demand for ETFs in the early hours of trading in the U.S., participants like Jane Street respond by shorting ETF shares they don’t own, without the borrowing costs they would normally have. Then they cover those positions with futures instead of immediately buying the underlying asset. Yale ReiSoleil from Untrading put it well: it creates a gray area where price discovery can be muted without anyone technically breaking the rules.

But here’s the key point that many people miss: the existence of a structure that can be used legally to temporarily pressure prices is not the same as saying a company is actively manipulating the market. Alex Kruger argues that the net demand for spot Bitcoin is identical whether the authorized participant buys directly or gets it later through over-the-counter trades. The spot market never perceives a different buying pressure.

What’s interesting is that since Jane Street was sued this week by TerraForm Labs for alleged insider trading, the 10 a.m. volatility has disappeared. Bitcoin rose more than 6% on Wednesday, reaching almost $70,000. Coincidence or not, it suggests the market reacted more to the legal scandal than to any change in the firm’s behavior.

There’s no on-chain data or exchange records showing a coordinated campaign by Jane Street to manipulate prices downward. What does exist is an ETF structure that allows certain legal behaviors that can have side effects on price formation. It’s different—and quite different. These conspiracy patterns usually emerge after prolonged bearish trends, when sentiment is especially pessimistic. Bitcoin is at 73,880 right now, and although the morning volatility was real, attributing it to a single company seems more like a narrative than market reality.