Bitmine Immersion Technologies CEO Tom Lee said on Wednesday that the recent cryptocurrency crisis was a “mini crypto winter” that may now be over, in comments that came shortly after the company disclosed multibillion-dollar quarterly losses mainly related to unrealized sell-offs in Ether shares.
During a keynote speech at Paris Blockchain Week 2026, Lee said that stock markets had bottomed out as a result of the US-Israel war with Iran and that Ether (ETH) would emerge from “massive consolidation” driven by tokenization and agentic artificial intelligence initiatives tied to a shrewd contract network.
Lee argued that stocks bottomed out, leading to a recovery from what he called an “extraordinary” downturn in the cryptocurrency market that, for the first time, did not coincide with a broader bear market in stocks. “Stock markets bottom on bad news. And we have a lot of bad news,” Lee said, citing historical examples of stock markets falling after wars broke out.
Lee also said that 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 a quarter of Bitcoin’s (BTC) long-term value.
His comments come amid a broader cryptocurrency market downturn that has seen the price of Ether drop 43% since October 2025, reaching around $2,327 at the time of writing, well below Bitmine’s average cost of $3,660, according to data from Bitminetracker.
Bitmine reports a quarterly loss of $3.8 billion on its Ether stake
Lee’s comments also come after Bitmine announced a $3.82 billion loss on its Ether wallet holdings in the first quarter of the year, according to Lee’s Tuesday report. filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
This amount was primarily driven by the company’s unrealized losses on its cryptocurrency holdings of over $3.78 billion. Bitmine also reported $11 million in revenue, including $10.2 million from ETH staking.
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Despite mounting losses, Bitmine announced the purchase of 71,524 Ether on Monday, with the company currently holding approximately 4.04% of the total Ether supply. The latest acquisitions come shortly after Bitmine debuted on the Recent York Stock Exchange on April 9, upgrading from NYSE American.
Bitmine and Exodus Movement are the only two Ether treasury companies that have publicly disclosed Ether investments in the last 30 days.
Bitmine is the largest holder of corporate Ether with 4.6 million Ether currently valued at over $10 billion, while SharpLink Gaming is in second place with 863,000 Ether worth $1.89 billion. data from StrategicEthReserve shows.
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