Once a high-frequency trading giant at the center of attention, Jump Crypto has quietly withdrawn after a series of intense turbulences. Now, this mysterious force that once dominated on-chain liquidity is attempting to return to center stage with a new identity as a "crypto infrastructure builder".
Recently, Jump spoke out for the first time, announcing a comprehensive transformation into a core promoter of on-chain infrastructure and rarely disclosed its progress in lobbying US crypto policies, seeking to rebuild market trust in the new crypto cycle through technological innovation and regulatory cooperation.
Transforming into an Infrastructure Builder, First Participation in US Crypto Policy Lobbying
On June 20th, Jump Crypto, which had been quiet for a long time, rarely spoke out to officially reintroduce itself as a "crypto infrastructure builder". Considered one of the largest crypto trading participants, it is transforming from a behind-the-scenes trading giant to a core promoter of on-chain infrastructure.
In the public announcement on its official website, Jump Crypto reviewed that over the past few years, it has been low-key but never stopped building, with the team always focusing on identifying and breaking through core bottlenecks constraining crypto system performance and scalability. "We don't sit in an ivory tower discussing the future ten years from now; we start with the toughest nuts to crack. History tells us that building itself will give birth to more building," Jump wrote.
Jump emphasized its core contributions in projects like Pyth, Wormhole, Firedancer, and DoubleZero, stating that while these projects have different technical directions, they all originated from technical limitations encountered in real on-chain trading. It is precisely this "construction driven by trading" path that has enabled the Jump team to evolve from a liquidity provider to a key driver of crypto infrastructure.
However, Jump repeatedly emphasized in its declaration that despite playing a core contributor role in multiple infrastructure projects, it never has 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 code but completely open-source and freely forkable. In our view, decentralization can be diverse (validators, token governance, etc.), but the core criterion is always: Is there the ability to unilaterally modify the protocol?"
Meanwhile, Jump has also deployed security infrastructure, including its self-developed self-custody wallet operation platform Cordial Systems, which can provide enterprise-level digital asset wallet solutions for Jump and multiple centralized exchanges. Its internally incubated security team, Asymmetric Research, has helped prevent over $5 billion in potential risks and handled more than 100 security incidents.
Notably, Jump's high-profile statement this time is not just a "clarification" of its role but also reveals its first active participation in regulatory policy consultation. In the past decades, Jump Trading's parent company had almost never appeared in the public policy field. Jump Crypto submitted a policy opinion letter to the US SEC last month, marking the first time Jump Trading's parent company has publicly commented on public policy, sharing their views on how US 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 period for reconstructing financial infrastructure and even organizational coordination methods. It's not just technological maturity, but policy changes that have brought this industry to a critical turning point," Jump pointed out.
Severely Damaged After Multiple Crises, Seeking Comeback After US Regulatory Warming
Jump Crypto, once the flagship force of Wall Street quantitative legend Jump Trading in the crypto world, faced a reputation crisis and financial pressure after being deeply involved in the UST manipulation controversy, FTX bankruptcy, and Wormhole hacking attack, choosing to gradually fade from the industry spotlight.
Jump truly fell into a reputation crisis starting with the Terra ecosystem collapse in 2022. According to US SEC file disclosures, Jump, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Tai Mo Shan Limited, reached an agreement with Terraform Labs during UST's first de-pegging 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 discounted bulk purchase rights for LUNA. This arrangement greatly enhanced the market's illusion of UST's self-repair capability, misleading public judgment about its algorithmic mechanism's effectiveness.
The SEC accused Jump of actually serving as LUNA token's legal underwriter between January 2021 and May 2022, illegally distributing unregistered securities in the US market. Jump profited nearly $1.3 billion through low-price purchases and high-price sales. Ultimately, Jump reached a $123 million settlement with the SEC by the end of 2024, revealing part of this mysterious trading giant's operations in the crypto market's deep waters.
The crisis did not stop at Terra. In February 2022, Wormhole, a cross-chain bridge developed by Certus One (previously acquired by Jump), was hacked, losing up to $325 million, becoming one of the largest security incidents in the crypto industry at the time. To maintain the protocol's availability and confidence, Jump chose to "pay out of pocket" to fill the gap, investing $320 million to rescue the market. While this move saved short-term reputation, it also severely eroded Jump's own financial situation.
FTX's collapse further aggravated Jump's financial black hole. As a key market maker and strategic partner of FTX and its sister company Alameda Research, Jump not only deeply participated in its platform's liquidity construction but also jointly heavily invested in the Solana ecosystem, becoming one of its largest institutional participants. However, with FTX's dramatic collapse, Solana project prices were severely slashed, and the ecosystem instantly disintegrated, further tightening Jump's balance sheet. According to Michael Lewis's book "Going Infinite", Jump lost up to $206 million in the FTX collapse, with its subsidiary Tai Mo Shan losing over $75 million, totaling more than $300 million.
Facing multiple setbacks, continuing US regulatory strictness, and the arrival of Crypto Winter, Jump Crypto quickly contracted its battle lines, began layoffs, reduced venture capital deployment, and strategically retreated from the US market, gradually fading from the crypto community's public view. In the second half of 2024, Jump massively sold its holdings of mainstream assets like ETH, USDC, and USDT, once triggering speculation about its complete withdrawal from the crypto market.
Until March this year, with the gradual clarification of U.S. regulations, this disappeared "whale" showed signs of restarting. According to CoinDesk's report 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 global regions, the current U.S. crypto trading volume is accelerating. Jump plans to recruit a group of crypto engineers and will timely start filling policy and government liaison positions.
Notably, based on public information, Jump has begun repositioning its crypto venture capital landscape this year. From January to now, Jump has successively participated in financing for at least six crypto projects, including infrastructure projects like Humanity Protocol, Momentum, Securitize, and SOON. This marks Jump's first large-scale public investment in over a year since October 2024, also demonstrating its determination to strategically transform towards on-chain infrastructure providers.
