(Sherwood Media)

Ethereum treasury firms are having a “bad time” as many fall below the value of their stockpile

Since October, BitMine, ETHZilla, SharpLink Gaming, and several other treasury firms’ stock prices have performed worse than ethereum itself.

Sage D. Young

11/11/25 10:24AM

The overall performance of digital asset treasury firms (DATs) focused on ethereum has been significantly down as shares of these firms are performing worse than their underlying asset in Q4.

Since October, the price of ethereum has dropped 18% to under $3,500 as of Tuesday morning.

Shares of BitMine Immersion Technologies and SharpLink Gaming — the two largest ethereum stockpiling companies — have fallen 20.2% and 31.2%, respectively, in the period. ETHZilla has slid 23.5%, BTCS Inc. has slumped 38.7%, and FG Nexus has decreased nearly 46%, data from crypto analytics firm Artemis shows.

The price action comes as their basic mNAV — a metric that refers to the market capitalization of these firms relative to the value of their crypto asset holdings — is below 1, according to Blockworks Research.

“An mNAV under one limits the ability for DATs to perform accretive dilution, which is the principle that permits DATs to purchase more underlying assets and fulfill their mandate of increasing the asset value per share,” per Gurnoor Narula, a research analyst at Placeholder VC.

Narula told Sherwood News, “DATs start showing cracks when they aren’t able to close that mNAV gap, either because they’ve run out of funds to do so, or the underlying asset is distressed such that investor confidence has waned.”

Bitcoin powerhouse Strategy has also suffered, declining 26% since October 1, though its mNAV stands just above 1.

Optimism remains, but not deploying any more capital

Kenetic, a blockchain venture capital firm that invested $5 million in ETHZilla, is not deploying more funds at this point, the investment firm’s founder and managing partner, Jehan Chu, said to Sherwood.

However, Chu remains confident in the digital asset treasury model and is “optimistic that when interest rates are lowered and crypto experiences a push, we will see a corresponding surge in DATs including ETHZilla.”

Chu continued, “DATs provide leverage on the underlying assets. In good times it’s great and in bad times it’s terrible — we’re just passing through a bad time.”

Sage D. Young4h

XRP tops 24-hour chart on South Korean crypto exchange

XRP is among South Korea’s favorite coins.

In the last 24 hours, XRP saw the highest trading volume on South Korean exchange Upbit at over $105.3 million, a figure exceeding bitcoin’s $102.6 million, ethereum’s $62.9 million, and dogecoin’s $27.7 million, data from CoinGecko shows.

Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs saw $5.3 million worth of inflows on Tuesday, bringing monthly inflows to more than $65.3 million, according to SoSoValue.

The activity has not, however, translated into positive momentum for the token, with XRP remaining flat at the $1.43 level in the period.

Prediction market-implied odds of XRP rising above $1.50 in May (a level that hasn’t been surpassed in over two months) now stand at 70%, up from as low as 9% at the start of the week.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

XRP returning to Upbit’s leadership position in trading volume follows the news earlier this week that Ripple’s prime brokerage unit secured a $200 million debt facility from global investment management firm Neuberger Berman to aid with the unit’s margin financing solutions.

Elsewhere, the XRP Ledger notched a new record of 332,000 addresses holding at least 10,000 tokens, worth $14,300, per data analytics platform Santiment. “Historically, rising numbers of mid-to-large wallets suggest increasing conviction from investors who are less focused on short-term price swings and more interested in long-term positioning,” Santiment posted Tuesday night on X.

“This is especially notable because XRP has spent much of 2026 trading below previous highs, meaning many holders appear willing to accumulate during fear rather than chase momentum,” Santiment added.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

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“Thursday isn’t the finish line, it’s the gate. A clean markup is what tells institutional capital it’s safe to come off the sidelines.”

EL SALVADOR-ECONOMY-CRYPTOCURRENCY-BITCOIN

$6.75B

Sage D. Young5/12/26

Cryptocurrency theft has become a huge source of state revenue for North Korea.

Between 2016 and early 2026, threat actors linked to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have stolen ~$6.75 billion across 263 documented incidents, security services provider CertiK estimated in a report published Tuesday morning.

The data likely falls short of the actual magnitude, as hundreds of smaller exploits against individuals and early-stage projects remain underreported.

“DPRK actors have consistently targeted humans and supply chain weaknesses rather than smart contract code vulnerabilities,” the report stated. “Across nearly a decade of operations, their primary attack vector has rarely been code. It has almost always been people.”

For example, North Korea’s more than $270 million exploit on solana-based protocol Drift was six months in the making. It involved Drift contributors physically meeting in multiple industry conferences across several countries with people claiming to be part of a quantitative trading firm.

DPRK actors who siphoned $625 million from the Ronin network in 2022 also used a social element: an exploiter impersonated a job recruiter on LinkedIn and provided a fake offer to an employee at Sky Mavis, the firm backing Ronin, through a PDF infected with malicious spyware.

“They are state employees executing a strategic mandate with the full backing of a nuclear-armed government. Their persistence, resources, and willingness to invest months in a single operation reflect institutional incentives that no criminal enterprise can match,” the report added.

“The fundamental challenge remains: North Korea has weaponized cryptocurrency theft as an essential revenue stream for regime survival. Until that incentive structure changes, the threat will persist and evolve.”

Last month, the decentralized finance ecosystem saw 28 hacks, the highest monthly number of exploits ever, totaling $635.2 million, with the largest coming from ethereum-native protocol KelpDAO.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin breakout?

5/12/26

Bitcoin’s bull-bear cycle signal turns green

When the indicator moves out of bear territory and enters the early bull zone, it often suggests that the worst phase of the correction has already passed and that market structure is beginning to recover, according to one analyst.

Sage D. Young5/11/26

BitMine, the largest ethereum treasury firm, will slow down pace of accumulation

After acquiring more than 5.2 million ethereum tokens, worth $12 billion at current prices, BitMine Immersion Technologies announced it will dial back its weekly buying.

The company commands 4.3% of the total supply of ethereum and will likely meet its target of 5% this year.

“If ETH closes above $2,100 at the end of May 2026, this would be the third consecutive monthly gain — this has never been seen in a crypto bear market,” according to BitMine Chairman Tom Lee. “Thus, a close above $2,100 would validate ‘crypto spring’ has arrived,” Lee continued in a statement.

Meanwhile, SharpLink Gaming, the second-largest ethereum treasury company, announced a nonbinding agreement with Galaxy Digital to roll out a $125 million liquidity fund that will deploy capital into on-chain yield strategies.

“This marks an extension of our treasury strategy into more active strategies, aimed at providing sustainable term structures to great projects,” SharpLink CIO Matthew Sheffield said in a press release.

SharpLink also released its Q1 earnings results Monday morning, reporting total quarterly revenue of $12.1 million and a net loss of $685.6 million, below analyst expectations, “primarily driven by non-cash unrealized losses and impairments offset by net realized gains.”

In other ethereum ecosystem news, Ronin, a gaming-based blockchain known for Axie Infinity, will be migrating on Tuesday to a layer 2 network on ethereum. Ronin was previously exploited for around $625 million by North Korea’s Lazarus Group in March 2022.

Ethereum treasury firms are having a “bad time” as many fall below the value of their stockpile

Optimism remains, but not deploying any more capital

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XRP tops 24-hour chart on South Korean crypto exchange

BitMine, the largest ethereum treasury firm, will slow down pace of accumulation

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