Tom Lee’s ETH losses at Bitmine exceed FTX customer losses
Tom Lee, founder of Fundstrat and Chairman of ether (ETH) treasury company Bitmine Immersion Technologies, has lost more on ETH using other people’s money than the $8 billion worth of losses suffered by FTX customers.
With 4,422,659 ETH purchased at an average $3,850 apiece, Lee’s company raised capital to buy the asset at over $2,000 more per coin than today’s price.
As a result, he’s lost $8.8 billion of his company’s assets.
At time of writing, ETH is trading at $1,843, down 60% over the past six months alone. Unfortunately, Bitmine Immersion has been buying tons of ETH over that bearish period — increasing losses for its investors at an alarming rate.
Over the past six months, as ETH was declining 60%, Bitmine Immersion bought an extra 2,708,760 ETH.
Those progressively disastrous additions increased the company’s losses from $4.8 billion to $8.8 billion.
Read more: Even Ethereum treasury companies are selling ETH to pay off debt
Bitmine Immersion lost $8.8 billion by buying ETH
It’s not particularly remarkable for digital asset treasury (DAT) companies to have declined in value.
The Wall Street fad, which peaked in early summer 2025, was to overpay for leverage in the hope that the mania would increase to even more exuberant heights, or that the company could convince bond investors or other capital allocators to offer it even more leverage.
In the distant future, all DATs focused on the ultimately limited supply of bitcoin (BTC) or ETH as another reason to invest in these leveraged acquisition strategies, even though their efforts to corner the market usually fizzled within single digit percentages of the outstanding supply of those assets.
What started as modest premiums of a few percentage points quickly ballooned into stock debuts rallying to 23x the value of their crypto holdings.
That once-23x overvalued stock, like many similar treasury stocks, fell 98% by November from its May peak, and is now down over 99%.
Bitmine Immersion is down 88% from its July 2025 high. It’s lost over $600 million on its ETH holdings in the past week.
Within five months of its June 3, 2025 peak, Lee’s company had shed 80% of its stock value. By February 5 of this year, Lee’s ETH treasury had lost $8 billion for investors, and that loss extended to as much as $9 billion intraday this morning.
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