TomLee's influence in South Korea is no joke! South Korea's 'Ant Army' bucks the trend and keeps buying: Ethereum-focused micro-strategy BitMine sees an 80% stock price plunge but remains highly sought after. According to reporting by Zhitong Finance, despite a significant drop in stock price from its July peak, Ethereum-hoarding company BitMine Immersion Technologies (http://BMNR.US) is still expected to become one of South Korea's most popular foreign stocks by 2025. Data from the Korea Securities Depository shows that this U.S. stock company, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel and led by Wall Street analyst Tom Lee, ranks second among the most favored foreign securities for Korean investors in 2025, trailing only Google’s parent company Alphabet (http://GOOGL.US). Known as the 'Ant Army,' South Korean retail investors are famous for chasing high-risk assets. In the crypto space, they particularly favor so-called 'altcoins,' which are smaller tokens with massive price volatility. This year, a new type of digital asset treasury company (publicly listed entities focused on hoarding cryptocurrencies) has quickly captured the attention of Korean traders. BitMine announced on July 3 that it was pivoting from Bitcoin mining to hoarding Ethereum (the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap), causing its stock price to skyrocket over 3000% to hit an all-time high. Previously overlooked by investors, the company’s transformation made it the overseas stock with the highest net buying volume in South Korea in July. However, since its peak, BitMine’s stock price has plunged about 82%. But South Korean retail investors seem undeterred: data from the Korea Securities Depository shows that as of December 29, they have already poured $1.4 billion into BitMine in 2025. Retail investors are also doubling down with riskier tools: they’ve injected $566 million into T-Rex’s '2x Long BitMine Daily Target ETF,' which was launched after BitMine’s summer surge and aims to deliver twice the daily returns of the underlying asset. Since its September peak, the fund has dropped about 86%.