Bitmine Immersion Technologies chairman Tom Lee said Wednesday that the recent crypto slump was a “mini crypto winter” that may already be ending, in comments that came shortly after the company disclosed a multibillion-dollar quarterly loss tied largely to unrealized markdowns on the company’s Ether holdings.
During a keynote speech at Paris Blockchain Week 2026, Lee said that equity markets have bottomed due to the US-Israel war with Iran, and that Ether ($ETH) will emerge from its “massive consolidation,” driven by tokenization and agentic artificial intelligence initiatives tied to the smart contract network.
Lee argued that equities have reached their bottom, leading to a recovery from what he called an “unusual” crypto market downturn, which didn’t coincide with a wider bear market in stocks for the first time. “Equity markets bottom on bad news. And we’ve had a lot of bad news,” said Lee, citing historical examples of stock markets bottoming out after the outbreak of wars.
Lee also said $ETH is “probably on its way to 60,000” if his market thesis is correct and later described $62,000 as a fair-value scenario over the next few years, based on Ethereum reaching roughly one-quarter of Bitcoin’s ($BTC) long-term value.
His comments come amid a wider crypto market downturn that has seen Ether’s price fall 43% since October 2025 to trade around $2,327 at the time of writing, significantly below Bitmine’s average cost basis of $3,660, according to data from Bitminetracker.
Bitmine posts $3.8 billion quarterly loss on Ether holdings
Lee’s comments also follow Bitmine’s posting of a $3.82 billion loss on its Ether holdings during the first quarter of the year, according to a Tuesday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The figure was mainly driven by the company’s over $3.78 billion in unrealized losses on its crypto holdings. Bitmine also reported $11 million in revenue, including $10.2 million from $ETH staking.
Related: Ether treasuries need liquid staking edge to beat ETFs, says Lido exec
Despite the mounting losses, Bitmine announced a purchase of 71,524 Ether on Monday, with the company now holding roughly 4.04% of the total Ether supply. The latest acquisitions came shortly after Bitmine debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on April 9, uplisting from NYSE American.
Bitmine and Exodus Movement are the only two Ether treasury companies to publicly disclose Ether investments over the past 30 days.
Bitmine is the largest corporate Ether holder with 4.6 million $ETH currently valued at over $10 billion, while SharpLink Gaming is second, with 863,000 Ether worth $1.89 billion, data from StrategicEthReserve shows.
Magazine: Sharplink exec shocked by level of $BTC and $ETH ETF hodling — Joseph Chalom
