From crypto quant giant to infrastructure hermit, Jump Crypto's "atonement" transformation

Author: Nancy, PANews

Once a high-frequency trading giant at the forefront of the industry, Jump Crypto has quietly exited the stage amid a series of dramatic upheavals. Now, this once-secret force that dominated on-chain liquidity is attempting to return to the spotlight under the new identity of a "crypto infrastructure builder."

Recently, Jump made its first high-profile statement, announcing a complete transformation into a core driver of on-chain infrastructure, and rarely disclosing its progress in lobbying for U.S. crypto policy, aiming to rebuild market trust in the new crypto cycle through technological innovation and regulatory cooperation.

Transforming into an Infrastructure Builder, First Participation in U.S. Crypto Policy Lobbying

On June 20, the long-quiet Jump Crypto made a rare statement, officially reintroducing itself to the world as a "crypto infrastructure builder." This company, regarded as one of the largest participants in crypto trading, is transitioning from a behind-the-scenes trading giant to a core driver of on-chain infrastructure.

In a public statement released on its official website, Jump Crypto reflected that despite its low profile in recent years, it has never stopped building, with the team always focused on identifying and overcoming the core bottlenecks that restrict the performance and scalability of crypto systems. "We do not sit in an ivory tower discussing the future ten years from now; we start with the hardest problems. History tells us: building itself will give rise to more building," Jump wrote.

Jump emphasized its core contributions to several projects, including Pyth, Wormhole, Firedancer, and DoubleZero, stating that although these projects have different technical directions, they all originated from the technical limitations encountered by Jump in real on-chain trading. It is precisely this "building driven by trading" approach that has allowed the Jump team to evolve from liquidity providers to key drivers of crypto infrastructure.

However, Jump also repeatedly stressed in its statement that despite playing a core contributor role in multiple infrastructure projects, it does not hold control over these networks. "We firmly believe that the essence of decentralization is that no single entity has 'unilateral control.' Therefore, the protocols we build are not only open source but are also fully open and can be freely forked. In our view, decentralization can take many forms (validators, token governance, etc.), but the core criterion remains: is there the ability to unilaterally modify the protocol?"

At the same time, Jump has also laid out security-related infrastructure, including its self-developed self-custody wallet operating platform, Cordial Systems, which can provide enterprise-level digital asset wallet solutions for Jump and several centralized exchanges; the internally incubated security team, Asymmetric Research, has helped recover over $5 billion in potential risks and has handled over 100 security incidents.

It is noteworthy that Jump's high-profile statement is not only a "clarification" of its role but also reveals its first proactive participation in advising regulatory policies. Over the past few decades, Jump's parent company, Jump Trading, has rarely appeared in the public policy arena. However, Jump Crypto submitted a policy opinion letter to the U.S. SEC last month, marking the first time in its history that Jump Trading has publicly expressed its views on public policy, sharing their thoughts on how U.S. securities laws should adapt to the digital asset era and calling for common-sense reforms to eliminate the regulatory ambiguity and uncertainty widely felt in the industry.

"Now is the best window to reconstruct financial infrastructure and even the way organizations coordinate. It is not only the maturity of technology but also the shift in policy that has brought this industry to a critical turning point," Jump pointed out.

Recovering from Multiple Crises, Seeking a Comeback After U.S. Regulatory Warming

Jump Crypto was once the flagship force of Wall Street's quantitative legend Jump Trading in the crypto world, but after being embroiled in controversies over UST manipulation, the FTX bankruptcy, and the Wormhole hack, this high-frequency trading giant active on the crypto front faced a reputation crisis and financial pressure, choosing to gradually fade from the industry's spotlight.

Jump's reputation crisis truly began with the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in 2022. According to documents disclosed by the U.S. SEC, Jump, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Tai Mo Shan Limited, reached an agreement with Terraform Labs during the first decoupling of UST in May 2021, secretly using over $20 million of its own funds to purchase UST in an attempt to "artificially" stabilize its $1 peg. In exchange, Jump obtained a large-scale discounted subscription right for LUNA. This arrangement greatly enhanced the market's illusion of UST's self-repairing ability, misleading the public's judgment on the effectiveness of its algorithmic mechanism.

The SEC charged that Jump acted as a statutory underwriter for LUNA tokens from January 2021 to May 2022, illegally distributing securities in the U.S. market without registration. Jump profited nearly $1.3 billion through low-price purchases and high-price sales. Ultimately, by the end of 2024, Jump reached a $123 million settlement with the SEC, revealing part of this mysterious trading giant's operations in the deep waters of the crypto market.

The crisis did not stop with Terra. In February 2022, the Wormhole protocol, developed by Certus One, which Jump had previously acquired, was hacked, resulting in losses of up to $325 million, becoming one of the largest security incidents in the crypto industry at that time. To maintain the protocol's usability and confidence, Jump chose to "dig into its own pockets" to fill the gap, investing $320 million to stabilize the market. Although this move salvaged short-term reputation, it also severely eroded Jump's own financial resources.

The collapse of FTX further exacerbated Jump's financial woes. As a key market maker and strategic partner of FTX and its sister company Alameda Research, Jump not only deeply participated in liquidity building on its platform but also heavily bet on the Solana ecosystem, being one of the largest institutional participants in the Solana ecosystem. However, with the sudden collapse of FTX, the price of Solana projects plummeted, and the ecosystem collapsed instantly, further tightening Jump's balance sheet. According to disclosures in Michael Lewis's book "Going Infinite," Jump lost as much as $206 million in the FTX collapse, with its subsidiary Tai Mo Shan losing over $75 million, totaling over $300 million.

Faced with multiple blows, increasingly stringent U.S. regulations, and the arrival of a crypto winter, Jump Crypto quickly contracted its operations, began layoffs, reduced venture capital layouts, and strategically withdrew from the U.S. market, gradually fading from the public eye of the crypto community. In the second half of 2024, Jump significantly sold off its holdings of mainstream assets such as ETH, USDC, and USDT, sparking speculation about its complete withdrawal from the crypto market.

Until March of this year, as U.S. regulations gradually clarified, this "missing whale" showed signs of a restart. According to CoinDesk, citing informed sources, Jump is restoring its U.S. cryptocurrency business to full operational status. Although Jump has maintained digital asset trading and market-making activities in other regions globally, crypto trading volume in the U.S. is accelerating. Jump is planning to hire a group of crypto engineers and will begin filling U.S. policy and government liaison positions in due course.

Notably, from publicly available information, Jump has begun to re-establish its crypto venture capital landscape this year. From January to now, Jump has participated in the financing of at least six crypto projects, including Humanity Protocol, Momentum, Securitize, and several infrastructure projects like SOON. This marks Jump's first large-scale return to public investment after more than a year since October 2024, indicating its determination to strategically transform into an on-chain infrastructure builder.