Bitmine Immersion Technologies Chairman Tom Lee said on Wednesday that the recent crypto downturn is a “mini-crypto winter” that may already be over, in comments shortly after the company disclosed a multibillion-dollar quarterly loss primarily related to unrealized losses on its Ether holdings.
In his keynote speech at Paris Blockchain Week in 2026, Mr. Lee said that the stock market will bottom out due to the war between the US, Israel, and Iran, and that Ether ($ETH) will emerge from “massive integration” driven by tokenization and agent artificial intelligence efforts associated with smart contract networks.
Lee argued that stock prices have hit rock bottom, leading to a recovery from what he called an “unprecedented” crypto market downturn, which for the first time did not coincide with a broader bear market in the stock market. “Stock markets bottom out on bad news, and we have a lot of bad news,” Lee said, citing the historical example of the stock market bottoming out after the outbreak of war.
Lee also said $ETH If his market theory is correct, he said the stock would “probably head toward $60,000,” and later said $62,000 is a fair value scenario for the next few years, based on Ethereum reaching about a quarter of Bitcoin ($BTC) long-term value.
His comments come amid a broader crypto market downturn, where the price of Ether has fallen 43% since October 2025, according to Bitmine Tracker data, and is trading at around $2,327 at the time of writing, well below Bitmine’s average cost base of $3,660.
Bitmine posts $3.8 billion in quarterly losses on Ether holdings
Lee’s comments also come after Bitmine posted a $3.82 billion loss on its Ether holdings in the first quarter of this year, according to a Tuesday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
This figure was primarily driven by unrealized losses on the company’s cryptocurrency holdings of over $3.78 billion. Bitmine also reported $11 million in revenue. Of this, $10.2 million $ETH Staking.
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Despite mounting losses, Bitmine announced the purchase of 71,524 Ether on Monday, and the company now holds about 4.04% of the total Ether supply. The latest acquisition comes shortly after Bitmine went public on the New York Stock Exchange on April 9th, off the NYSE American.
Bitmine and Exodus Movement are the only two Ether Treasury companies to publicly disclose their Ether investments in the past 30 days.
Bitmine is the largest corporate ether holder with 4.6 million people $ETH According to StrategicEthReserve data, its value is currently over $10 billion, with SharpLink Gaming in second place with 863,000 Ether worth $1.89 billion.
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