South Korean retail merchants have saved piling into Ether hoarder BitMine Immersion Applied sciences Inc. even after the U.S.-listed inventory collapsed greater than 80% from its July peak, turning it into one of many 12 months’s most excessive examples of speculative demand surviving a wipeout.
BitMine is about to shut 2025 as one of the vital widespread abroad equities amongst South Koreans, rating second solely to Alphabet Inc. in web shopping for, in keeping with Korea Securities Depository knowledge cited by Bloomberg.
Native buyers have poured a web $1.4 billion into the corporate this 12 months, staying lively patrons even because the shares slid about 82% from their July 3 excessive.
The inventory’s growth started after BitMine introduced a pivot from bitcoin mining to constructing an ether treasury, positioning itself as a listed car designed to build up ETH.
The transfer sparked a rally of greater than 3,000% into early July, pulling the corporate from obscurity into the highest ranks of overseas shares purchased by South Koreans. The agency is backed by billionaire Peter Thiel and headed by Tom Lee, a Wall Road forecaster recognized for crypto bullishness.
The shopping for has not been restricted to the underlying shares. South Korean merchants additionally sought even higher-octane publicity by way of T-Rex’s 2X Lengthy BitMine Day by day Goal ETF, a leveraged product concentrating on twice the inventory’s every day efficiency.
Traders have funneled $566 million into the ETF, which is down roughly 86% from its September peak.
BitMine’s enchantment is tied to its stability sheet. The corporate holds about $12 billion price of ether, making it the most important digital-asset treasury firm devoted to ETH, in keeping with knowledge compiled by strategicethreserve.xyz.
Ether itself is down about 11% in 2025, according to CoinDesk market data, after the wave of listed accumulators helped push the token to a document close to $5,000 in August earlier than the rally pale.
For Korean retail merchants, the attraction is much less about secure publicity and extra about convexity. Ether treasury corporations commerce like amplified ETH proxies, with fairness threat layered on prime of crypto volatility.
That construction creates sharp upside throughout momentum phases, and equally sharp drawdowns when flows reverse, nevertheless it additionally explains why the inventory stays a magnet for South Korea’s high-risk “ant” investor base even after an 80% fall.
