BitMine and SharpLink Keep Buying Ether as FG Nexus Sells at a Loss

Two of the largest corporate holders of ether added to their positions this week while a third kept selling, according to disclosures compiled by Cryptonews. BitMine bought 27,084 ETH, worth about $43 million, taking its holdings to 5.7 million ETH, roughly 4.7% of everything in circulation. SharpLink added 39,196 ETH for about $62.43 million and now holds more than 202,000. FG Nexus sold 3,375 ETH and has now realised more than $86.8 million of losses on its treasury. Ether was near $1,550 on Friday.

Same asset, opposite decisions

The three companies hold the same coin and have drawn opposite conclusions from the same price. Ether is down about 70% from its August 2025 peak. BitMine, whose assets Cryptonews put near $9.8 billion, is buying the drawdown. SharpLink is doing the same at a smaller scale. FG Nexus is selling into it. The cumulative realised loss is the cost of having built the position at higher prices, and the sale suggests the company does not expect that cost to shrink by waiting.

One listed company now holds close to one ether in twenty. It is a different thing from Strategy's bitcoin position, which is measured against a fixed supply; ether's issuance and burn move with usage, so the share can drift without BitMine trading a coin. It also means BitMine's own balance sheet is one of the larger sources of buy-side demand for the asset. When it stops, the market will notice. It has not stopped, and this week it accelerated.

The other treasury stories this week

Strategy's own model cracked on Friday, when its market value fell below the value of the bitcoin it holds, a ratio the company calls mNAV, printing 0.99. Below 1.0 the company cannot issue shares at a premium to buy more coins, which was the whole mechanism. Solmate, which holds about two million SOL, is down 78% for the year and facing shareholder litigation. The digital-asset treasury trade no longer moves as one. This week separated its participants by what they can afford to do.

Bitcoin's holders are doing something different

The ether treasuries are splitting at the moment bitcoin's are converging. On-chain data cited by CoinDesk on 17 June showed long-term holders absorbing about 125,000 BTC in the first half of the month, with exchange reserves down 80,000 BTC since February to 2.71 million. Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder, disclosed its first sale since 2022 on 1 June, 32 coins for about $2.5 million, and has disclosed no purchase since. The bitcoin side of the trade is being taken over by holders who do not file quarterly reports. The ether side is still being fought out by companies that do.

June is not over

Ether's $1,500 print on 8 June is still the low of the month in the data available. Whether that holds through Tuesday's month-end, with the Ethereum Foundation's restructuring only a week old and Friday's Deribit expiry just behind, is the near question. Sentiment offers no help: the Fear and Greed index read 15 on Friday, in the range the index labels extreme fear, and bitcoin's implied volatility was at its highest since early June. The further one is whether BitMine's pace of accumulation can continue at a price that keeps falling for everyone else who bought.