Terraform Labs’ court-appointed bankruptcy administrator has filed a lawsuit against market maker Jane Street for allegedly using non-public information to profit from the 2022 collapse of the Terra ecosystem.
Summary
- Terraform’s bankruptcy administrator has sued Jane Street, alleging the trading firm used material non-public information to front-run trades during the May 2022 collapse.
- The complaint names co-founder Robert Granieri and traders Bryce Pratt and Michael Huang.
- A Jane Street spokesperson has denied all allegations.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday and accused Jane Street insiders, including its co-founder Robert Granieri, and employees Bryce Pratt and Michael Huang of “misappropriating confidential information and manipulating market prices.”
According to the heavily redacted complaint, Jane Street front ran Terraform’s liquidity moves around the Curve 3pool withdrawal and used the information it acquired to unwind hundreds of millions of dollars in UST exposure “that hastened the collapse of Terraform.”
The suit claims that Jane Street and Terraform first connected for over-the-counter trading in 2018, but that trading “did not take off until February 2022” when Jane Street deployed Bryce Pratt, a former Terraform intern, to establish lines of communication with his former colleagues at Terraform.
Pratt allegedly helped set up those channels due to his history as a former Terraform intern, which allowed him to “seamlessly pass information from Terraform to Jane Street.”
“Given Jane Street’s interest in cryptocurrency, Pratt leveraged the relationships he had developed at Terraform to feed material non-public information to Jane Street’s crypto desk,” the complaint said.
“Jane Street abused market relationships to rig the market in its favor during one of the most consequential events in crypto history,” Terraform’s court-appointed administrator, Todd Snyder, said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.
The lawsuit seeks damages and an order requiring Jane Street to disgorge the profits it allegedly made through insider trading and market manipulation, along with interest, and calls for a jury trial.
In response, a Jane Street spokesperson has denied all allegations and told WSJ that the suit was a “desperate” attempt to “extract money,” and the firm will defend against these “baseless, opportunistic claims.”
“[..] It is well-established that the losses suffered by Terra and Luna holders were the result of a multibillion-dollar fraud perpetrated by the management of Terraform Labs,” the spokesperson said.
Terraform collapsed in May 2022 after its algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD lost its dollar peg, which resulted in one of the crypto industry’s largest meltdowns as roughly $40 billion vanished from the market. Subsequently, Terraform filed for bankruptcy in 2024, while co-founder Do Kwon pleaded guilty to fraud charges and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The bankruptcy administrator also launched a lawsuit against Jump Trading in December and claims the firm entered into secret agreements with Kwon.
Read the full article here