Jump Trading sued for $4 billion in connection to Do Kwon’s Terra Labs collapse: WSJ

The bankruptcy court-appointed administrator of the Terraform Labs collapse is suing Jump Trading, accusing the high-speed trading company of illegally profiting from and contributing to the $40 billion crash, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Todd Snyder, tasked with winding down what remains of the crypto empire, is seeking $4 billion in damages from the trading company, its co-founder William DiSomma and Kanav Kareiya, who began as an intern and rose to become the platform’s president. Terra’s Post-Chapter 11 X account confirmed WSJ’s story in a post on X on Friday

“Jump Trading actively exploited the Terraform Labs ecosystem through manipulation, concealment, and self-dealing that enriched Jump while financially devastating thousands of unsuspecting investors,” Snyder said. “This action is a necessary step to hold Jump Trading accountable for illegal conduct that directly caused the largest crypto collapse in history.”

Terraform Labs collapsed in 2022 after its algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) lost its dollar peg, sparking a dramatic market spiral. Within days, its sister token, Luna, plunged to near zero. The $40 billion implosion wiped out the savings of hundreds of thousands of investors globally and set off a domino effect of failures across the crypto industry, coming to a head with the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange that November.

The Singapore-based company filed for bankruptcy in January 2024 and agreed just months later to pay roughly $4.5 billion to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to settle a civil securities fraud lawsuit. Terraform founder Do Kwon, who started the company in 2018, pleaded guilty in August to two criminal counts and was sentenced last week to 15 years in prison.

The court-appointed bankruptcy administrator alleged that Jump Trading had a secret agreement to prop up UST ahead of its collapse and ultimately walked away from Terraform’s failure with billions in gains, according to an Illinois district court filing.

Jump made about $1 billion from selling Luna, according to prior SEC filings cited by the WSJ.