- Tom Lee says ETH fell 20% over the week due to cautious trading, low leverage, and rising gold pulling money from crypto.
- Tom Lee sees the dip as attractive, with BitMine continuing to buy and stake.
Ethereum, which is trading down over 20% weekly, whereas Bitmine has been steadily buying Ethereum. With that, Tom Lee, executive manager of BitMine, argued that Ether’s price fell even though the network remained strong, as fewer traders were taking risky, leveraged bets and many investors shifted their money toward safer assets like gold.
Analysing the Coinglass data, Ethereum’s first quarter of 2026 is becoming the third-worst Q1 in history, with the asset down 20.96% so far this year. Whereas, on February 2, Bitmine shared a thread post, in which Lee mentioned that ETH has slid from around $3,000 to $2,300 over the past month, despite Ethereum posting record activity, with daily transactions hitting 2.5 million and active addresses rising to a new high of 1 million.
Cautious Trading and Gold Rally Drag on ETH
Also, Lee explained that non-fundamental factors were driving ETH’s price weakness, and he mentioned two factors, one of which is the lack of leverage in crypto, where traders are still cautious and not using borrowed funds, as the after-effects of the October 10 market shock continue, limiting buying pressure.
Secondly, rising precious metals prices, where strong gains in assets like gold have pulled investor money away from riskier assets, reducing appetite for crypto.
In the post, BitMine mentioned its latest holdings update, as they invested around $10.1 billion in total crypto and investments, then, 4.3 million of $ETH, and earning staking rewards 2.81%, and Lee said, “ BitMine is in a position to ride out crypto volatility while earning recurring income and staking reward and there is no pressure to sell any ETH at these levels.”
Bitmine’s total staked ETH rose to 2.9 million in the past week, and they acquired 41, 788 ETH, as mentioned in the post. However, the BitMine treasury neared $7 billion in unrealized losses because of Ethereum’s fallen prices over the past week alone.
But, Tom Lee finally mentions, “Bitmine has been steadily buying Ethereum, as we view this pullback as attractive, given the strengthening fundamentals. In our view, the price of ETH is not reflective of the high utility of ETH and its role as the future of finance.”
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