Chicago-based trading giant Jump is returning its U.S. cryptocurrency operations to full strength after scaling it back over the past couple of years due to regulatory scrutiny and uncertainty.
While Jump has maintained its digital assets trading and market-making activity in other parts of the globe, crypto trading volume is now accelerating in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the situation. In addition, Jump is looking to hire a clutch of crypto engineers and plans to start filling U.S. policy and governmental liaison roles in due course, a second person said.
The previous U.S. administration, aided and abetted by anti-crypto regulators and weaponized banking authorities, did its best to choke off the digital assets sector across the States—a situation rapidly reversed under Donald Trump.
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Jump found itself at the center of regulatory scrutiny in the wake of the collapse of the Terra Luna stablecoin and FTX. This led to reports of a pullback in the U.S., including the spin-out of Jump’s Wormhole project and a halving of headcount at the Jump Crypto division, which had peaked at about 150 staffers in 2022, according to Bloomberg.
An interesting proposition for Jump would be participation in the U.S. crypto ETF space, where the firm has remained conspicuously absent.
Looking ahead, a solana (SOL) ETF is likely to be granted at some point; Jump is known for its investment and development work in the Solana ecosystem, such as with projects like Firedancer, software designed to improve transaction throughput on the blockchain.
Jump declined to comment.
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