BlackRock buys up Bitmine shares as Ethereum threatens to fall to $1,400 price

BlackRock is doubling down on Ethereum by buying up more Bitmine shares during the market dip, the firm disclosed on Thursday.

The asset manager’s Bitmine holdings surged by 166% to $246 million in the fourth-quarter of 2025, according to a 13F-HR form filed with the SEC, Fintel data shows.

Tom Lee, the chair of Bitmine who predicts $250,000 per Ethereum, commented on the move with clapping emojis in a post on X.

BlackRock’s big vote of confidence comes as Ethereum’s price has fallen by 60% from its August peak to trade at just under $2,000.

And the price could plunge another 25% to $1,400, Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at the British bank Standard Chartered, said in an investor note shared with DL News.

Bitmine is the second-largest digital asset treasury company that mostly holds Ethereum. Its share price, which represents a levered bet on Ethereum, has also plunged nearly 70% over the past six months to $20 per share.

Crypto industry pioneers have dumped their Ethereum tokens en masse in February.

Vitalik Buterin, the blockchain’s co-founder, dumped at least $7 million worth last week in order to fund new initiatives. Stani Kulechov, founder of decentralised finance platform Aave, sold off over $8 million worth of world’s second largest cryptocurrency.

And Bitmine itself is underwater at least $6.6 billion on its Ether purchases.

Yet Wall Street’s best have been buying the dip. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs disclosed it now owns just over $1 billion in Ethereum exchange-traded funds.

“The best investment opportunities in crypto have presented themselves after declines,” Lee said on Monday after Bitmine purchased another $80 million worth of Ethereum.

Still bullish

Poor market performance isn’t denting BlackRock’s conviction in the second-largest cryptocurrency.

In January, the firm said that Ethereum will lead the tokenisation of real-world assets.

It cited the fact that some 66% of all tokenised assets are on Ethereum, dwarfing Binance’s BNB Chain ecosystem which commands 10%. Far behind are Solana at 5%, Arbitrum at 4%, Stellar at 4%, and Avalanche at 3%.

In January, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink described tokenisation as necessary while speaking on a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 0.7% over the past 24 hours, trading at $66,582.
• Ethereum is down 0.4% past 24 hours at $1,955.

What we’re reading

• Aave Labs proposes paying DAO all revenue from Aave-branded products — DL News
• The superstars attending Trumps’ World Liberty Forum on February 18 — DL News
• UNI Spikes on BlackRock DeFi Move, Then Gives It All Back — Unchained
• The Structural Bull Case for Crypto in a Changing Liquidity Regime w/ Jamie Coutts — Milk Road
• Why Tether is forecast ‘flippening everything’ as Bitcoin and Ethereum prices tumble — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.