Beijing time, on February 8, 2026, a publicly listed mining company named BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) saw its holdings surge by 40,613 ETH within a week, bringing its total holdings to 4,325,738 ETH, which accounts for approximately 3.58% of the total Ethereum supply. This set of numbers quickly ignited market discussions. At the same time, an on-chain whale address 0xa5B0, which had previously incurred a loss of about $8.8 million, not only did not exit the market but also continued to use approximately 20x leverage to open a long position of 60,000 ETH, currently sitting at an unrealized loss of about $1.4 million. One is a publicly listed company slowly accumulating nearly “buying” 3.58% of the on-chain supply, while the other is a high-leverage gambler continuing to double down amid deep losses—when long-term funds increase their holdings against the trend and extreme leverage gambling coexist, what is happening in the Ethereum market? Is it building a bottom in despair, or is it accumulating gunpowder for a new round of gambling?
The Speed and Cost of the Listed Mining Company Consuming 3.58% of Ethereum Spot
● In terms of position structure, BitMine currently holds a total of 4,325,738 ETH, of which approximately 2,897,459 ETH has entered staking contracts. Based on the price of $2,125 per ETH quoted by PR Newswire, this roughly estimates a scale of about $6.2 billion, indicating that the company is not only betting on Ethereum at the spot level but has also locked most of its chips at the protocol level, deeply binding to network security and yield curves. With limited public information, this combination of “spot + staking” makes BitMine's systematic exposure in the ETH ecosystem far exceed that of ordinary mining companies or general institutional holders.
● In terms of pace, BitMine concentrated its increase of 40,613 ETH over the past week, combined with existing positions, making it one of the most influential “system players” on-chain. This large-scale accumulation completed within a single week is not a natural result of long-term passive holding but rather resembles a deliberate, time-sensitive active allocation adjustment that may be strongly related to internal decision-making or external market judgments, showing management's clear attitude towards the current price range: viewing the sharp decline as a strategic accumulation opportunity rather than a risk signal at the cycle top.
● It is worth noting that BitMine's position on the Bitcoin side is extremely restrained—public data only shows it holds 193 BTC, which sharply contrasts with its position of several million ETH, effectively downplaying BTC exposure in its asset allocation and concentrating the company's main crypto risk on a single asset, Ethereum. This indicates a strong directional judgment on ETH's long-term performance relative to BTC, exposing BitMine's shareholders and creditors to a more concentrated single-asset volatility risk.
● However, even though BitMine's ETH position data is highly transparent, key information regarding its risk tolerance is noticeably absent: current public information does not disclose the company's cash balance, equity investment scale, overall balance sheet structure, and staking yield levels, among other core elements. There are views in the market suggesting it may hold hundreds of millions in cash, but such claims often stem from a single source and remain in the realm of unverified information. Until these gaps are filled, inferring its safety margin or profitability solely based on position size carries significant information incompleteness risk, and investors must remain cautious when interpreting its “3.58% supply gamble.”
Dangerous Signals from Leverage Whales Suffering Heavy Losses Yet Doubling Down
● In stark contrast to BitMine's unleveraged spot + staking layout is the operational path of the on-chain address 0xa5B0: after previously incurring a cumulative loss of about $8.8 million on its ETH long position, this address did not choose to reduce its position or close out high-risk positions but instead further opened a new long position of 60,000 ETH using approximately 20x leverage. This means its nominal exposure far exceeds the risk scale that ordinary institutions or mining companies are willing to bear at a single point in time, representing a typical behavior pattern of “doubling down on failed trades,” amplifying sensitivity to short-term price fluctuations.
● From a balance sheet perspective, 0xa5B0's current high-leverage long position is in a state of about $1.4 million unrealized loss. Under a high-leverage structure, as long as the ETH price continues to decline by a not exaggerated amount, it may hit the liquidation line, triggering significant passive selling. For the overall market, the passive liquidation of such high-leverage whales often amplifies short-term volatility; once key price levels are breached, it may trigger more chain reactions of forced liquidations and algorithmic trading, turning what could have been a “bottoming” price range into a violent washout vortex.
● When comparing 0xa5B0's actions with BitMine's strategy, one can clearly see the life-and-death struggle between “slow money” and “fast money” on the same asset: the former primarily focuses on unleveraged spot and on-chain staking, resembling a bet on the long-term evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem; the latter is almost entirely centered around extreme bets on short-term direction and volatility, concerned with whether the price will move as expected within days or even hours. Both types of capital may exhibit the same buying actions on-chain, but the underlying time dimensions and risk tolerances are starkly opposite, ultimately amplifying each other's impact during volatility.
● For 0xa5B0's behavior of “doubling down after heavy losses,” whether it is an early bet on a potential rebound or a desperate all-in after being passively trapped is difficult to qualitatively determine from a single transaction record. However, from a risk management perspective, such operations that continue to increase leverage after significant losses are closer to a gambler's psychology—attempting to reverse the situation by amplifying stakes all at once rather than making rational decisions based on a systematic review of the market and their own risk tolerance. It may create short-term price spikes but does not provide stable support for long-term trends.
Price Halved Yet New On-Chain Activity Highs
● From a more macro price perspective, Ethereum has retraced about 62% since its peak in 2025, a level of decline that can be compared to the most severe adjustments in the previous cycle. Against this backdrop, market sentiment naturally leans towards narratives of “continuing bear market” and “ongoing capital outflows”: whether it is the high-leverage liquidations in the derivatives market or the capitulation rhetoric on social media, all reinforce a sentiment of “ETH no longer has imagination,” while BitMine and 0xa5B0's counter-trend actions appear incongruous in this emotional context.
● In contrast to the pessimism surrounding prices, analyst Tom Lee proposed a rather controversial viewpoint: after a significant price drop, the daily trading volume and active address count on the Ethereum chain have reached historical highs. This statement is currently still in a pending verification state, as it lacks official statistical standards and complete time series data support, making it impossible to regard it as a fact confirmed by multiple sources. However, if this trend is validated by subsequent data, it would mean that even as prices suffer heavy declines, the underlying activity of application layers and user behavior has not collapsed in tandem, indicating a clear divergence between on-chain real usage demand and secondary market sentiment.
● This divergence of “price down, on-chain activity up” may stem from multiple overlapping factors: on one hand, with the continuous expansion of L2 networks and DeFi protocols, some application layer demand has migrated and amplified in a lower-cost environment, maintaining high interaction frequencies at the protocol level; on the other hand, the price retracement has lowered the usage threshold, attracting more long-term participants in scenarios like NFTs, gaming, and on-chain finance as unit costs decrease. From a medium to long-term perspective, this structure of “usage metrics not collapsing with price” may lay the foundation for subsequent capital inflows during the bear market.
● Tom Lee also provided another historical analogy: “Historically, after every drop of over 50%, a V-shaped recovery often follows.” Similarly, this statement can currently only be viewed as a viewpoint based on limited samples rather than a statistical law, let alone a guarantee of future trends. However, for ETH, which is experiencing a 62% retracement, this analogy offers a possible path for “whether there is rebound space after a deep drop” on an emotional level, and partially explains why long-term funds like BitMine choose to increase their positions after significant price declines rather than following the crowd to remain bearish.
The Return of Bitcoin Funds Reflects Institutional Risk Appetite
● Compared to the extreme bets on the Ethereum side, institutional behavior in the Bitcoin ecosystem appears more “calculated.” On February 9, 2026, ProCap Financial announced the repurchase of $135 million in convertible bonds and has cumulatively repurchased about 2% of its circulating common stock since December 2025. This series of actions clearly conveys signals of enhancing capital efficiency and shareholder returns. For a company holding a large Bitcoin position, choosing to repurchase bonds and shares during market volatility also expresses confidence in its own balance sheet and future earning capacity.
● In terms of asset composition, ProCap currently holds 5,007 BTC and approximately $72 million in cash, providing a certain buffer between risk assets and cash flow. Unlike BitMine's almost unilateral bet on ETH, ProCap's structure is closer to traditional institutional risk control logic: on one hand, it participates in the long-term appreciation potential of crypto assets by holding Bitcoin, and on the other hand, it uses cash reserves to hedge against potential short-term liquidity shocks from severe price fluctuations, thus retaining the initiative to adjust positions and continue repurchases as the market weakens further.
● Another important institution, Strategy, increased its holdings by 1,142 BTC over the past week, with an average purchase price of about $78,815, raising its total Bitcoin holdings to 714,644 BTC, with an average cost of about $76,056. From the data, Strategy is patiently increasing its stakes near high levels while deliberately controlling the pace and scale, avoiding aggressive behaviors like 20x leverage, and instead treating short-term price fluctuations as “batch accumulation windows in long-term operations,” rather than a one-time trigger for upward bets.
● When juxtaposing the actions of ProCap and Strategy, a relatively consistent picture emerges: mainstream institutions are still in a net accumulation state on the Bitcoin side but strictly controlling pace and risk exposure, managing volatility through repurchases, cash buffers, and incremental buying. This attitude of “neither fleeing nor going all-in” provides a certain central force for crypto assets—it may not immediately reverse price trends, but it continuously signals through capital flows that institutional long-term allocation willingness for this asset class has not disappeared under macro uncertainty and short-term retracements.
The Collision of Institutional Slow Accumulation and High-Leverage All-In
● If we place BitMine's large-scale spot and staking layout, the “steady accumulation” behavior of institutions like ProCap and Strategy on the Bitcoin side, and the short-term high-leverage bets of whale address 0xa5B0 on the same canvas, we can outline three typical funding profiles in the current crypto market: one is a publicly listed company heavily betting on a single chain on its balance sheet, another is asset management institutions that smooth their entry over multiple cycles, and the last is high-leverage speculators betting on direction within a few trading days. They are all competing within the same price system but are constrained by completely different conditions.
● The differences in constraints directly determine behavioral logic: publicly listed companies must face shareholders, audits, and regulations, with institutional constraints on drawdowns and risk exposure. Even if they bet decisively, it is difficult to spend lavishly with 20x leverage like individual whales; asset management institutions are responsible for the drawdown curves of their LPs or clients, typically controlling volatility through incremental accumulation, hedging, and multi-asset allocation; as for high-leverage accounts like 0xa5B0, they are almost solely responsible for their liquidation lines. As long as they maintain sufficient margin, they have the space to continuously accumulate, close positions, and re-accumulate in a short time, making their behavior more susceptible to emotional and short-term price noise.
● When these three forces converge in the same market, the result often produces an “amplification effect” at key price levels: institutional funds tend to slowly support and accumulate when prices approach the lower end of their valuation range; meanwhile, high-leverage funds may be concentratedly liquidated if prices briefly breach a certain threshold within the same time window, creating a resonance of “institutions accumulating while leverage is cleared.” For observers, this type of resonance manifests as sharp fluctuations in K-lines, reflecting the concentrated embodiment of differences in funding duration and constraints.
● In this context, the key to building a judgment framework lies not in guessing the profit or loss of a specific high-leverage address's next transaction, but in identifying which funds have longer durations and more transparent information sources. Whether it is a publicly listed company like BitMine that needs to disclose information regularly, or asset management institutions like ProCap and Strategy, their positions and behaviors are subject to external supervision and internal risk control constraints, and their allocation decisions are often based on more comprehensive research and risk assessments. In contrast, individual whales betting with 20x leverage are more suitable as observational samples for market sentiment and short-term extreme risks rather than as directional guides for long-term trends.
Where Will Ethereum Go Next in the Eye of the Storm
Based on current information, a rather torn picture of Ethereum can be outlined: on one end, there is a price drop of about 62% since the peak in 2025, with narratives filled with “bear market,” “tide receding,” and “capital flight”; on the other end, there are signs that on-chain activity may reach new highs (still pending data verification), along with actions of companies like BitMine and various institutions quietly increasing their positions. At the same time, on the exchange level, high-leverage funds represented by 0xa5B0 continue to gamble on direction amid deep losses, tying the life and death of personal accounts to the success or failure of a few short-term fluctuations. Prices, on-chain data, and funding behaviors are sending contradictory signals to each other.
In such an environment, investors first need to actively distinguish between “long-term value signals on-chain” and “short-term price noise on exchanges”: the former is reflected in protocol usage, ecological expansion, long-term holding, and staking behaviors, while the latter is more constituted by high-leverage liquidations, emotional resonance, and violent sweeps during periods of weak liquidity. Treating the profit and loss curve of high-leverage whales as a compass for predicting long-term trends often leads to repeated emotional harvesting while neglecting those slow forces that continuously increase exposure at the balance sheet level.
In the next one to two quarters, for ETH, key variables will focus on two levels: first, whether the ecological fundamentals represented by L2, DeFi, and application layer innovations can continue to signal “on-chain activity has not collapsed,” thereby supporting heavy players like BitMine and traditional institutions to continue increasing or even adding exposure; second, whether the potential liquidation pressure on the high-leverage chain can be gradually digested by the market rather than erupting at a certain point in time, triggering another round of “waterfall” declines. If the former continues and the latter is cleared in an orderly manner, the current position of Ethereum may be closer to a prolonged bottoming period rather than a mid-stage one-way drop.
Equally important is the need to maintain clarity about one's cognitive boundaries in the face of an incomplete information environment: regarding BitMine's cash reserves, staking yields, and overall balance sheet situation, there are still many blanks in the publicly available data; details circulating in the market, such as its holding of $595 million in cash, mainly stem from a single tweet channel and require further cross-verification; Tom Lee's assertions about “on-chain activity reaching new highs” and “a V-shaped recovery after a drop of over 50%” should also be viewed as personal opinions rather than established facts. Until these premises are filled with more sufficient data and disclosures, placing risk management ahead of any trading decision may be the minimum choice every participant should make in this eye of the storm.
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