While Bitmine Immersion Technologies has one of the largest corporate assets among ether holding companies, the decline in ETH price below $1,800 caused a major loss in value in the company treasury. According to DropsTab data, the unrealized loss of the company’s ether reached approximately $8.9 billion.
Simultaneous decline in stocks and crypto assets
Shares of Bitmine, where Tom Lee is chairman, fell another 5.9% on Wednesday, falling below $17. Thus, the loss in the stock reached 28% since the beginning of May. The company’s stock fell to the lowest level since Bitmine announced in May 2025 that it was pivoting to an Ethereum-focused treasury strategy.
During the same period, ETH also retested its February lows. Ether, the second largest crypto asset by market value, has lost more than 20% of its value since the beginning of May. This period coincided with the statements of Tom Lee, also the co-founder of Fundstrat, in which he argued that the short-term crypto winter in the market was over and a new period of recovery had begun.
While the current market value of the ethers held by the company is approximately $10 billion, the unrealized loss calculated at current prices reached $8.9 billion.
Bitmine’s ether accumulation and income structure
Bitmine has collected more than 5.4 million ETH in about a year. This amount corresponds to approximately 4.5% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. At current prices, the total value of this position is calculated at approximately $10 billion.
The company’s situation showed that the pressure on companies operating with the digital asset treasury model has increased again. In this model, companies raise capital from public markets and use this source to accumulate crypto assets. The recent weakening of crypto prices has caused many company shares to fall below the net value of their assets.
Bitmine’s structure differs from some of its peers in this field. The company financed its ether purchases mainly through share issuance. For this reason, it does not bear the same interest burden and leverage pressure that some of its competitors that grow with debt face.
Bitmine also generates revenue from staking activities and operates a staking service called MAVAN. The company announced that it has staked more than 4.7 million ETH, which is approximately 87% of its holdings. Annualized staking revenue is estimated to be approximately $276 million.
Mini dictionary: Staking refers to the locking of assets in certain blockchain networks to contribute to network security and transaction verification processes. In return, users or institutions can earn reward income from the network.
Long-term expectation remains maintained as market pressure continues
Strategy, known for its crypto treasury model, recently announced that it is selling bitcoin for the first time since 2022. This step brought to the agenda again the discussions on how the company will finance its future obligations due to the issuance of preferred shares.
However, Tom Lee did not change his long-term expectation for ether. Speaking at the Proof of Talk conference held in Paris at the beginning of the week, Lee said that tokenization, artificial intelligence-supported transactions and corporate staking applications can reshape the role of Ethereum in the global financial system, and in this context, ETH can reach the $250,000 level in the long term.
Tom Lee stated that Ethereum’s role in the global financial system can be redefined through tokenization, AI-supported transactions and institutional staking, so he maintains his long-term expectation.
However, the market seems to be more focused on the current price pressure in the short term. Ether’s re-approach to the levels seen in the sales wave in February magnified the damage on Bitmine’s balance sheet and made the difference between the long-term theses of the company management and the current pricing of the market more visible.
