South Korean retailers have continued to pile into Ether hoarder BitMine Immersion Technologies Inc. even after the U.S.-listed stock collapsed more than 80% from its peak in July, making it one of the year’s most extreme examples of speculative demand surviving a wipeout.
BitMine is set to close 2025 as one of the most popular overseas stocks among South Koreans, second only to Alphabet Inc. in net purchases, according to Korea Securities Depository data cited by Bloomberg.
Local investors, who have poured a net $1.4 billion into the company this year, remain active buyers even as shares have fallen about 82% from their July 3 high.
The stock’s boom began after BitMine announced a pivot from bitcoin mining to building an ether treasury, positioning itself as a publicly traded vehicle designed to accumulate ETH.
The move sparked a rally of more than 3,000% in early July, pulling the company from obscurity into the upper ranks of foreign stocks bought by South Koreans. The firm is backed by billionaire Peter Thiel and led by Tom Lee, a Wall Street forecaster known for crypto bullishness.
The purchase has not been limited to the underlying shares. South Korean traders also sought even higher-octane exposure through T-Rex’s 2X Long BitMine Daily Target ETF, a leveraged product targeting twice the stock’s daily performance.
Investors have poured $566 million into the ETF, down about 86% from its peak in September.
BitMine’s appeal is tied to its balance sheet. The company holds about $12 billion worth of ether, making it the largest digital asset finance company dedicated to ETH, according to data compiled by strategicethreserve.xyz.
Ether itself is down about 11% in 2025, according to CoinDesk’s market data, after the wave of listed accumulators helped push the token to a record near $5,000 in August before the rally petered out.
For Korean retailers, the appeal is less about stable exposure and more about convexity. Ether treasury firms act as augmented ETH proxies, with equity risk layered on top of crypto volatility.
That structure creates sharp upside in momentum phases and equally sharp downside when flows reverse, but it also explains why the stock remains a magnet for South Korea’s high-risk “ant” investor base even after an 80% drop.
