In early May, Tom Lee told the market crypto spring had started.
Ether is down more than 20% since then, dragging his company's stock down 28% and leaving the ether pile he spent the last year building on a paper loss of nearly $9 billion.
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Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) is the biggest corporate holder of ether on the planet. Under Lee, who chairs the company, it has bought 5.4 million ETH in about a year - roughly 4.5% of every ether out there.
At today's prices, that pile is worth about $10 billion. The problem is what they paid for it.
Unrealized losses - the paper hit on a position they haven't sold - now sit near $8.9 billion, per data from DropsTab.
The stock has followed the coin down, with shares falling another 5.9% Wednesday to below $17. That's the lowest level since Bitmine made its shift to an ether treasury strategy in 2025.
The treasury playbook - raise money in public markets, use it to buy crypto - was built by Michael Saylor's Strategy (MSTR), and it worked when prices went up.
It's getting harder as prices fall and treasury stocks start trading below the crypto they hold. Strategy itself just sold bitcoin for the first time since 2022 - the kind of move that happens when borrowed money is on the line.
Bitmine is in a different spot. The company paid for its ether with stock, not debt, so there are no loan payments and no margin calls hanging over the position.
It also stakes about 87% of its ether - meaning it locks up the coins to help secure the Ethereum network in exchange for yield. That setup throws off about $276 million a year in staking revenue.
That doesn't fix the $8.9 billion hole, but it means there's no forced selling on the table.
Lee's long-term view hasn't shifted. At a conference in Paris this week, he said ether could one day hit $250,000 on the back of tokenization, AI transactions, and corporate staking.
That would be roughly a 140x from here, but for now the gap between Lee's thesis and the tape is the story - ether is back at February lows, and the largest corporate buyer of the asset is the one feeling it most.
Ether's next move will tell us whether spring came early or didn't come at all.
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