Tom Lee's BitMine Posts $3.8 Billion Quarterly Loss Due to Ethereum Price Plunge

In brief

• BitMine posted a net loss of more than $3.8 billion during the three-month stretch ending in February.
• The firm attributes most of the losses to the unrealized or paper losses mounting from its Ethereum holdings.
• Shares of BMNR are up about 1% on Wednesday, but have slid nearly 60% in the last six months.

Leading Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies lost more than $3.8 billion in the quarterly period ending on February 28, according to a new 10-Q the firm filed with the SEC on Tuesday.  The firm’s net loss figure of $3.81 billion was largely driven by mounting unrealized losses from its Ethereum holdings, which accounted for nearly 99% of the firm’s reported losses. Over a longer timeframe, the losses are even greater, extending beyond $9 billion in the six-month span ending in February. “Our operating model is now anchored by our ETH treasury strategy and capital-light ecosystem services,” the firm wrote, adding that “ETH market conditions, which affect the value of our holdings and the economics of any staking or staking-adjacent activities,” are now a key driver of its results.

The firm also posted an unrealized loss of around $21 million for its investment in Eightco (ORBS), a Worldcoin treasury firm that also provides investors exposure to private artificial intelligence giant and ChatGPT maker, OpenAI. (Disclosure: BitMine Chairman Tom Lee is an investor in Dastan, Decrypt’s parent company.)  All in, the results have soured substantially from the same period last year, when the firm reported a loss of just $1.15 million.  The biggest culprit? Ethereum.

The second-largest crypto asset, and the primary treasury vehicle for BitMine, has fallen nearly 53% from its August all-time high of $4,946, recently changing hands at $2,346. ETH was trading around $1,965 at the close on February 28, down from about $2,800 at the start of December. BitMine, which relentlessly adds to its holdings—including a $157 million ETH purchase reported earlier this week—now holds 4,874,858 ETH worth more than $11.3 billion. But that’s far less than it has paid to accumulate it, having purchased its first 4.47 million ETH for nearly $17 billion, according to its 10-Q. In other words, 92% of the firm’s total ETH holdings were accumulated with an average price of around $3,794 per ETH, or around 63% higher than the asset currently trades. The staggering losses have shrunk in recent days, as ETH has jumped around 4% in the last week of trading.  Shares in the firm (BMNR), which were uplisted last week to the NYSE from the smaller NYSE American exchange, are up around 1% on Wednesday, recently changing hands at $21.69.  They’ve fallen nearly 60% in the last six months of trading and are down 20% year-to-date.