Crypto: Crypto’s Stress Test Hits Balance Sheets As Bitcoin, Ether Collapse

Crypto’s downturn is rippling through treasuries, ETFs and mining infrastructure, exposing how digital asset volatility reshapes balance sheets and operations.

Crypto’s latest sell-off isn’t just a price story. It’s showing up on balance sheets, inside spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and even in how infrastructure gets used when markets turn.

This week, Ether’s (ETH) slide is leaving treasury-heavy companies nursing massive paper losses, while Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs are giving a new wave of investors their first real taste of downside volatility.

At the same time, extreme weather is reminding miners that hash rate still depends on power grids, and a former crypto miner-turned-AI darling shows how yesterday’s mining infrastructure has quietly become today’s AI backbone.

This week’s Crypto Biz newsletter breaks down BitMine Immersion Technologies’ widening paper losses, BlackRock Bitcoin ETF investors slipping underwater and the impact of a US winter storm on public miner production.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, chaired by Tom Lee, is facing mounting paper losses on its Ether-heavy treasury as ETH slid below $2,200 during the latest crypto sell-off.

The decline has pushed the company’s unrealized losses past $7 billion, underscoring the risks tied to balance sheets built around volatile digital assets.

BitMine currently holds about $9.1 billion worth of Ether, including a recent purchase of 40,302 ETH, leaving the company highly exposed to further price swings.

While the losses remain unrealized unless assets are sold, they highlight the fragility of crypto treasury strategies when markets turn lower. Lee has pushed back on the criticism, arguing that unrealized losses are inherent to ETH-holding companies. “BitMine is designed to track the price of ETH,” he said, adding that in a downturn, ETH weakness is to be expected.

As Bitcoin crashed below $80,000, aggregate returns for investors in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) turned negative, highlighting the depth of the recent selloff and its impact on investor portfolios.

Source: CoinTelegraph