đŸ€« Did the 10 A.M. Dump Just Disappear?

PLUS: Crypto adds $170B in hours as Jane Street faces a TerraUSD lawsuit, short positioning unwinds, Nvidia doubles down on AI, Vitalik outlines Ethereum’s next phase, and Bitcoin ATM scrutiny tightens.

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Cryptopolitan News
February 26, 2026 ‱ Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Did a lawsuit halt the “10 a.m. Dump” or did traders just want a villain?

Crypto ripped higher on Wednesday.

This move added over $170 billion to total market cap in a matter of hours. Bitcoin pushed back above $70,000. Ethereum jumped 13%. Solana surged 15%.

For a market that had been leaking funding rates and skirting breakdowns, the move felt sudden.

Then a theory started circulating.

The 10 a.m. pattern that traders illegally swore by

Some traders thought there was a pattern for months.

Each morning, at about 10 a.m. Eastern, Bitcoin would come under heavy selling. Cleverly enough to obliterate too heavily-long positions. Clean enough to feel mechanical.

On Wednesday, that didn’t happen.

Instead, price blasted higher just when traders were looking for another flush.

Crypto Twitter quickly connected dots.

Some suggested that Jane Street: the huge quantitative trading company had been responsible for what they called a “daily 10 a.m. dump.” The premise: short price, cause liquidations and repurchase lower.

There is no public evidence to support that claim.

But timing matters in markets. And the timing was curious.

The lawsuit that set off the bombshell

The rally came as news circulated about a lawsuit related to the 2022 TerraUSD collapse.

Todd Snyder, the bankruptcy administrator managing Terraform Labs’ wind-down, filed a complaint in federal court against Jane Street, co-founder Robert Granieri and employees Bryce Pratt and Michael Huang.

The allegation: that Jane Street took advantage of material nonpublic information from Terraform insiders to front-run trades in Terra’s last days.

Jane Street has denied any wrongdoing, describing the suit as “a transparent attempt to extract money” and attributing the collapse of Terra to internal fraud at Terraform.

Important context:

This is TerraUSD in 2022: not Bitcoin in 2026.

Markets, however, don’t always divide past from present.

Narrative > Evidence

Jane Street's 10 a.m. Bitcoin dumping was never confirmed. But here’s what traders were seeing:

Months of very suspicious-feeling 10 a.m. weakness, and suddenly a day in which “normal” sell-off didn’t show up and price ripping instead

Facts move slower than narrative in fragile markets.

Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst for Bloomberg News, summed up the change of mood plainly: “The bogeyman is gone.”

That remains to be seen.

What actually changed?

Outside the chatter about lawsuits, positioning was already thin.

  • Funding rates had turned negative.

  • Sentiment was near extreme fear.

  • Open interest had thinned.

In that environment, it doesn’t take much to ignite a squeeze.

Sometimes all a market needs to reverse positioning is a story.

Bigger picture

The Terra collapse wiped away about $40 billion in 2022 and set off one of crypto’s darkest cascades: one that would ultimately swim back into the FTX collapse.

At the time, Jane Street was already heavily enmeshed in crypto market structure. So was Jump Trading and Alameda.

Now those years are being litigated. And traders are asking a familiar question all over again:

Are crashes structural, or are they engineered?

The lawsuit will not answer that right away. But for at least one day, the market acted as if the pressure valve finally released.

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📊 Market Watch

đŸ€– Nvidia arms up diplomacy, and recommits to AI growth

Jensen Huang isn’t sweating the Pentagon vs. Anthropic face-off.

Huang struck a measured tone after reports that the U.S. Defense Department is considering designating Anthropic a “supply chain risk” if it doesn’t loosen restrictions on its A.I.: The government is free to use what it purchases, and companies are within their rights to monitor how their tools get used.

His bigger message? This isn’t existential.

“There are other AI companies. It’s not the only customer of the DoD,” he said.

Jensen also trained his sights on the notion that AI is going to gut software companies. The risks may be already priced in, but he believes they’re mispriced.

AI agents will not supplant tools like SAP, ServiceNow, Excel or Cadence. They’ll use them.

Notably, Nvidia guided $78B in Q1 revenue (number), with roughly 75% gross margins. Importantly, that view is predicated on zero China data center revenue.

Translation: The demand for A.I. is still strong, and that’s without China.

🧼 Vitalik slows ETH sales as Foundation outlines speedier future

It appears Vitalik Buterin is closing out a new round of ETH sales.

Roughly 16,420 ETH were sold to support Ethereum Foundation activities, on-chain data indicates, around the same amount previously indicated. Decades of this cause his holdings to fall from 700K ETH to~224K.

The selling hasn’t made a dent in price. ETH trades around $2,050.

Simultaneously, the Foundation launched a new dense roadmap (“Strawmap”) with an emphasis on:

  • Faster L1 finality

  • ZK-powered scaling

  • Data availability expansion

  • Quantum resistance

  • Shielded ETH transfers

Ethereum is certainly trying to do tighten execution while facing increased rivalry from speedier chains.

The message: sell some ETH, pay for the mission, ‘accelerate’ the chain.

🏧 Bitcoin ATMs have upped their scanning of customers, after scammers stole $333 million

Bitcoin Depot, the first major operator to do so, is now requiring id checks for every transaction at its kiosks across the United States.

Why?

In 2025, Americans lost $333.5M to scams using crypto ATMs, which is up 33% yearly, per FBI.

The Maine settlement is the third in less than a year for Bitcoin Depot; it agreed to pay $1.9 million to settle claims from an investigation last fall of scam activity involving its machines.

The larger problem: The number of U.S. crypto ATMs has surged past 31,000, opening up additional avenues for fraud. Multiple operators are being investigated.

KYC is tightening and scrutiny is rising.

But installations are ongoing: 16 new kiosks, on average, every day.

 đŸ„ Top tweets

Are you watching

ZachXBT’s investigation drops today

Crypto Twitter has been in guessing mode all week.

On-chain sleuth ZachXBT teased a major insider trading investigation set to drop February 26. He didn’t name the target, but that didn’t stop markets from reacting.

Within hours, Polymarket spun up a contract asking: Which platform will be exposed?

Volume exploded from $5M to over $14M. The market climbed into Polymarket’s top trending slots.

And right now?

Meteora (the Solana DEX) leads with roughly 47% odds.

Headline picks by our Comms Lead

Connecting Social Media GIF by MasterClass

Read of the day

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