Published: February 11th, 2026
BitMine (NYSE: BMNR), the Ethereum DAT led by crypto ‘mega-bull’ investor Tom Lee, added more than $80m worth of ether to its balance sheet last week, even as the price of the world's second-largest cryptocurrency languished near multi-month lows and the firm's paper losses swelled into the billions.
The Nevada-based company disclosed that it acquired 40,613 ether valued at roughly $83m, lifting its total holdings to more than 4.3m tokens. At current prices, that stash is worth around $8.8bn and represents roughly 3.6% of ether's circulating supply, an unusually concentrated position in an asset still known for its volatility.
Shares in BitMine rose slightly after the announcement, even as ETH struggled to stage a convincing rebound. The reaction suggests that, for now, equity investors remain willing to indulge the firm's long-term bet, despite evidence of how expensive it could become.
BitMine has been steadily accumulating Ether since last year, financing purchases through equity issuance and balance-sheet leverage, on the assumption that Ethereum will ultimately underpin large parts of the digital economy. That thesis has yet to be rewarded.
Ether has fallen sharply from its August peak near $4,950 and recently traded as low as $1,824 before recovering to just above $2,100. On BitMine's numbers, the firm paid an average price north of $4,000 for roughly 3.7m of its tokens. By that measure, its unrealised losses now approach $7.5bn.
Tom Lee, BitMine's chairman and a longtime crypto bull, remains unfazed. He argues that recent price weakness reflects sentiment rather than substance, and that Ethereum's “strengthening fundamentals” justify continued accumulation. Past drawdowns of similar magnitude, he notes, were followed by sharp recoveries.
History, however, could mitigate against that assumption. Previous rebounds occurred in an era of abundant liquidity, regulatory indulgence and accelerating adoption. Today's environment is less forgiving. Higher interest rates, stricter oversight and competition from alternative blockchains have all chipped away at Ethereum's once-unquestioned dominance.
Still, BitMine's approach has precedent. Strategy's aggressive accumulation of bitcoin, despite years of paper losses, ultimately became a template for corporate crypto exposure. Whether ether can deliver a similar redemption arc remains an open question. Buterin Looks Beyond Crypto
While ETH prices may have slumped, Ethereum's intellectual influence holds strong. Vitalik Buterin, the network's co-founder, turned his attention to a different frontier this week: artificial intelligence. In a series of recent posts, he argued that the prevailing “race to AGI” framing is misguided, flattening meaningful distinctions about purpose, governance and risk.
His critique is characteristically abstract but not without practical implications. Rather than pushing relentlessly toward ever larger models, Mr Buterin suggests that AI development should prioritise verifiability, decentralisation and privacy — areas where Ethereum's architecture might offer useful lessons. The goal, as he puts it, is not simply faster machines but systems that preserve human agency and minimise catastrophic risk.
This view contrasts sharply with the rhetoric emanating from Silicon Valley's leading AI labs, which increasingly speak of superintelligence as an inevitable destination. Buterin's alternative is less glamorous but more procedural: local language models, cryptographic attestations, zero-knowledge payments and client-side verification of AI services. Rails Rather Than Rockets
Several analysts echo this more modest vision. Rather than accelerating the arrival of general intelligence, they argue, blockchains like Ethereum could supply the “rails and guardrails” for machine-to-machine commerce: programmable deposits, usage-based payments and on-chain dispute resolution.
For investors it suggests a different timeline. If Ethereum's future lies in infrastructure rather than crypto trading, returns may accrue slowly and unevenly. That prospect sits uneasily with treasury strategies predicated on sharp price appreciation.
Yet it may also explain why some long-term holders remain steadfast. Ethereum's appeal increasingly rests on its role as a coordination layer rather than a digital asset. Whether markets will reward that role is another matter.
According to the latest data from CoinShares, investment products tied to Ether and Solana posted modest inflows last week, their first positive week since mid-January. Funds tracking Bitcoin recorded a third consecutive week of outflows, shedding roughly $264m.
Overall, the pace of withdrawals across crypto funds has slowed markedly, falling to under $200m last week from more than $1.7bn earlier in the month. Historically, such decelerations have sometimes marked inflection points, as forced sellers exhaust themselves and opportunistic buyers step in.
Other indicators point in the same direction. Measures of market momentum have plunged to deeply oversold levels, and anecdotal evidence suggests that large holders have reduced their selling. Prices, too, have bounced from last week's lows, with bitcoin recovering from nearly $63,000 to around $70,000.
Forecasts remain sharply divided. Some analysts argue that any rebound below $90,000 in bitcoin would amount to little more than a counter-trend rally, with downside risks still dominant. More pessimistic voices warn that highly speculative assets may struggle to justify elevated valuations in a world of tighter financial conditions.
Long-time bitcoin advocates like Michael Saylor insist that recent turbulence changes nothing about their long-term convictions, pointing to fixed supply and growing institutional familiarity as reasons for optimism.
BitMine sits uneasily between these camps. Its balance sheet reflects Tom Lee's unwavering faith in Ethereum's eventual primacy, yet its share price betrays investors' unease with the journey. Down nearly 60% over six months, the stock has absorbed much of the volatility that ether itself has not.
For now, BitMine's DAT strategy remains intact. The firm continues to buy into weakness, framing losses as the necessary cost of conviction. That posture may yet be vindicated if Ethereum fulfils its ambitions as a backbone for decentralised finance, digital identity and, perhaps, machine intelligence.
But the gap between narrative and numbers is widening. Until prices recover meaningfully, BitMine's bet will look less like prescience and more like stubbornness.
