(Getty Images)

BitMine acquires more ethereum despite being underwater amid token’s price decline

CEO Tom Lee believes “the price of ETH is not reflective of the high utility of ETH and its role as the future of finance.”

Sage D. Young

2/2/26 12:36PM

BitMine Immersion Technologies presses on ahead with its ethereum treasury strategy, having acquired 41,788 tokens last week.

The company’s stash is currently underwater: ethereum is trading below $2,375 on Monday, lower than the $2,480 level from June when the firm first announced a private placement to jumpstart its treasury strategy. The firm’s total investment in ethereum is around $15.7 billion, marking a paper loss exceeding $6 billion.

Since BitMine unveiled its treasury strategy, ethereum climbed to an all-time high of around $5,000 but has tumbled alongside the broader crypto market.

The recent pullback represents a reset instead of a “structural breakdown,” Nicholas Roberts-Huntley, CEO and cofounder of Blueprint Finance, said. Roberts-Huntley told Sherwood News, “Those with a long horizon should focus on onchain signals and network usage rather than short-term swings, as the protocol’s utility and adoption trends remain intact.”

CEO Tom Lee said the weakness in ethereum’s price does not stem from fundamentals, citing the climb of daily network transactions and active addresses in the past several months. During the crypto winters of 2021-22 and 2018-19, on-chain activity declined.

BitMine considers the pullback — a more than 18% drop in the last seven days — as an opportunity. Lee said, “In our view, the price of ETH is not reflective of the high utility of ETH and its role as the future of finance.”

Sage D. Young5h

Altcoin trading activity has lost its mojo

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

Main Altcoins Trading Volume in USD — The trading volume of ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, SUI, and LINK.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.”

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%.

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.

“Triple witching” day may put further pressure on bitcoin’s price

This is not “a favorable environment for risk assets.”

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy6h

Sage D. Young

3/19/26

Hyperliquid is the “1,000 pound gorilla in the room” leading year-to-date market gains amid conflict in the Middle East

While the crypto industry has shed $564.3 billion in 2026, Hyperliquid’s native token has bucked the downtrend and jumped 54.8% year to date.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

3/19/26

Bitcoin tumbles as oil and gas prices spike and the market’s mood turns risk-off

Bitcoin ETFs reverted to outflows and bitcoin suffered $192 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours.

Sage D. Young3/18/26

Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter.

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions.

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, has put its IPO plans on hold