BMNR Stock Tumbles as Tom Lee Defends BitMine’s $6B Ethereum Treasury Loss

BitMine’s stock, BMNR, has continued to see a downturn in its price amid the crypto market crash. This comes as the Ethereum treasury firm now faces over $6 billion in unrealized losses.

Bearish Pressure Builds on BMNR Stock After BitMine Losses

According to Yahoo Finance data, the BitMine stock has fallen by nearly 2% at the close of trading on Tuesday. It also declined by nearly 1% during pre-market trading.

The continuous fall in the shares has been largely attributed to the fall in value of the firm’s Ethereum treasury. The firm has 3.5% of the circulating ETH supply, valued at $9.9 billion. However, it has seen over $6 billion in unrealized losses as its value drops to a current price of $2,200 per ETH.

Based on data from their transactions as of November 30th, the firm had purchased its initial 3.7 million tokens at a value of almost $15 billion. The value of ETH is currently $8.83 billion. The value of losses also impacted the price movement of the BMNR stock.

It is also worth noting that despite the losses, the firm has continued purchasing additional ETH tokens. On Monday, the firm bought an additional 41,788 tokens. This means that despite the current valuation loss, the firm is continuing with its strategy of accumulating more tokens.

In addition, some firms are increasing their investment portfolios in the firm. For example, Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest has purchased additional shares in BitMine worth about $6 million. This shows that they believe in the potential for the BMNR stock to rebound from its current losses.

Tom Lee Pushes Back on Ethereum Treasury Criticism

In a new X post, the BitMine chairman defends its increasing paper losses as a result of the crypto crash. He said that the drawdown was simply a function of the design of its Ethereum treasury strategy, not an issue with execution.

Lee said that the firm is designed to follow the price of Ethereum and beat it over a market cycle. He also said that it is more similar to an index-style product than a tactical trading strategy. This explains the BMNR stock downturn as well

He said that it is no surprise to see unrealized losses during a broad pullback in crypto, and he wondered why it is a problem in this case and not in index products, which also move lower during a market downturn.

“Crypto is in a downturn, so naturally ETH is down BMNR will see “unrealized” losses on our holdings of ETH during these times,” he said