An 80% Wipeout Hasn’t Stopped Korean Retail From Chasing Tom Lee’s BitMine

An 80% collapse would normally mark the end of a speculative trade. In South Korea’s retail-driven crypto ecosystem, it has done the opposite.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, the Tom Lee–backed US-listed firm that reinvented itself as an Ether hoarding vehicle, now ranks second only to Alphabet among the most purchased overseas stocks by South Korean investors in 2025.

Korean Retail Keeps Buying Tom Lee’s BitMine Even as the Stock Implodes

That position has held even as BitMine’s shares plunged roughly 82% from their July peak, wiping out most of the gains from its explosive rally earlier this year.

BitMine (BTMNR) Stock Performance YTD. Source: Google Finance

According to on-chain analyst AB Kuai Dong, despite BitMine and USDC issuer Circle both collapsing more than 70% from their highs, they still landed in the top 10 overseas securities bought by Koreans this year. BitMine sat just behind Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.

“Korean bros are putting on a show of buying more the more they lose,” he wrote.

At the center of the trade is BitMine’s radical pivot. Once a marginal Bitcoin miner, the company rebranded itself as an Ether treasury, explicitly mirroring the playbook popularized by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, only with ETH instead of BTC.

BitMine now has 3% of the ETH supply

Two-thirds on the way to the ‘Alchemy of 5%’