10x Research said Bitmine Immersion Technologies, often described by the market as an Ethereum version of MicroStrategy, has inflicted roughly $10 billion in paper losses on investors. According to the report, the company raised $19.2 billion through 50 equity offerings over the past 11 months and used the proceeds to buy 5,543,872 ETH. Once ETH slid to around $1,650, the treasury trade unraveled fast.
Fifty stock offerings built a 5.54 million ETH position
10x Research said Bitmine spent the period from July 2025 to June 2026 repeatedly tapping the equity market, mainly through at-the-market offerings, then converting that capital into ETH holdings. The report said the position represented 4.6% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. What had been sold as a leveraged public-market route to ETH exposure turned into a sharp markdown after the token fell, with the treasury now valued at about $9.1 billion.
Measured against the amount of capital raised, the gap is severe. 10x Research estimated investor losses tied to Bitmine at about $10.1 billion, equivalent to a drawdown of roughly 52%. The damage did not come only from ETH falling. The stock structure itself amplified the loss.
ETH losses were compounded by a collapsing NAV premium
Markus Thielen’s team at 10x Research broke the decline into two forces. The first was simple asset depreciation: ETH dropped about 52% from Bitmine’s weighted average acquisition cost of $3,526. That move alone heavily reduced the marked value of the company’s treasury.
The second was the collapse of the premium that retail investors had been paying for Bitmine shares relative to the value of the underlying ETH. The report described this as a structural NAV premium. 10x Research estimated that before ETH even posted the full decline, investors had already overpaid by about $4.6 billion. Once the market turned, falling ETH prices and a shrinking premium hit at the same time.
10x sees little near-term rebound, but points to optionality
10x Research said it has remained critical of Ethereum over the past eight months and had warned against using treasury stocks to gain crypto exposure when the implied cost was too high. The report said the odds of a strong short-term rebound in ETH appear very low.
Still, the report did not end there. 10x Research argued that once a company’s share price has fallen far enough and the balance sheet has been damaged badly enough, the market may stop valuing what remains as a simple spot proxy for the underlying asset. In the firm’s words, investors may effectively be buying a “pure option.” It added that underneath Bitmine’s battered balance sheet, the market may be missing what amounts to a “free call option.”