K33 Research: Lack of Data Support for "Jane Street 10 AM Flash Crash" Narrative

BlockBeats News, February 26th: Vetle Lunde, Head of Research at K33 Research, released an analysis report stating that from January 2025 to February 2026, Bitcoin's average minute-by-minute return rate at 10:00 was actually in the top 25% of the day. Despite negative returns indeed occurring at 10:00 in the past four months, there are still 34 minutes throughout the day that performed worse.

Vetle Lunde mentioned that BTC's volatility peak is concentrated around the release of U.S. macro data and around the U.S. stock market's opening and closing (09:31–09:37). This is a result of the market's microstructure being closely linked to the U.S. stock market, rather than targeted manipulation at specific times. If we were to discuss "price manipulation," the performance of non-whole-hour minutes like 10:12 and 09:41 would be more worthy of attention. The highly debated "Jane Street 10 AM price manipulation" lacks data support.