Jump Crypto, the crypto division of high-frequency trading firm Jump Trading, is the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), according to a report from Fortune on Thursday.
A person familiar with the matter told Fortune that the CFTC is looking into the Jump’s involvement in crypto, specifically its trading and investing activity.
Jump’s crypto division was first publicly announced in September 2021 by Kanav Kariya, who assumed the role as president of Jump Crypto five years after he joined the firm as a software engineering intern.
At the time, Kariya said the project was six years in the making, born out of an intern project at Jump’s research lab at the University of Illinois. In the years that followed, Jump Crypto established itself as one of the crypto industry’s major market makers and venture investors, involved in developing projects such as the Wormhole bridge and Pyth network.
When Wormhole was exploited for $320 million, Jump stepped in and replenished 120,000 ETH to make community members whole. However, that hero status within the crypto industry was called into question after the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, and reports emerged that Jump made $1.28 billion from inflating the price of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin.
When asked specifically about Jump’s role in restoring UST’s peg, Kariya invoked the fifth amendment during a deposition with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In March, former Jump employee and whistleblower James Hunsaker testified that Jump co-founder Bill DiSomma directed Jump traders to accumulate UST, according to a report of the Terraform Labs trial by the Wall Street Journal’s Alexander Osipovich.
Jump also lost $206 million at the time of FTX’s collapse, according to Michael Lewis’ book “Going Infinite,” which cites private documents in the possession of former FTX COO Constance Wang.
The firm has since dialed back its presence in the crypto industry, and has notably been absent from participating in developments like the launch of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
