They Stole $40 Billion. The SEC Has the Receipt

Forty billion dollars. Gone.

That’s what the TerraUSD collapse cost retail investors in 2022 — the single biggest wipeout in crypto history.

For two years, nobody could prove exactly how it happened. Then in December 2024, the SEC handed us the receipt. A $123 million fine against a Wall Street prop trading firm that had been secretly buying up TerraUSD (UST) to hold its peg — making retail investors believe the system was working when it wasn’t.

People stayed in because they trusted what they saw. The prop desk knew the truth and collected its payments anyway.

The firm was Tai Mo Shan Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jump Crypto Holdings.

Here’s what they did.

When TerraUSD started losing its $1 peg in May 2022, Tai Mo Shan stepped in and bought more than $20 million of UST to prop it back up. The market saw the peg holding and assumed the algorithm was working.

Retail investors stayed in. They trusted what they saw.

What they didn’t know was this: The algorithm wasn’t holding the peg. It was Jump Crypto’s trading desk, making massive purchases it had been financially incentivized to make by Terraform itself.

The peg eventually failed anyway. $40 billion in investor assets got wiped out. Jump Crypto collected its incentive payments. Retail investors were left holding the bag.

I’ve been sounding the alarm on what I call the Great Crypto Conspiracy for years. The pushback I got was predictable. “Teeka, you sound paranoid.”

Well, in December 2024, the SEC walked away with a $123 million check from a Wall Street prop trading firm caught manipulating the crypto market. I don’t need anyone to believe me anymore. The receipts are in.

And it didn’t stop there.

In December 2025, Terraform’s own bankruptcy administrator filed a separate $4 billion civil lawsuit against Jump Trading — the parent company behind the same Jump Crypto subsidiary the SEC had just fined — alleging market manipulation, self-dealing, and defrauding the same retail investors who lost everything in that collapse. The firm denies the allegations and the case is still working through the courts.

Two legal actions. Same firm. Same playbook.

Friends, if you’ve been beating yourself up this cycle, wondering why every trade you made went against you, why every coin you bought faked out — stop. It wasn’t you.

This is what you were up against.

I’ve Been Watching This Happen