Tom Lee: Binance Hack Reaction Shows Crypto Strength

Bitmine Immersion Technologies said on Nov. 2 that it holds 6,060,506 ETH, about 4.9% of ether's 122.2 million supply. The company bought 8,573 ETH in the past week. Chairman Tom Lee used the update to argue that the market's calm response to the $6.3 billion Binance theft is a bullish sign.

What Bitmine holds

As of 4 p.m. ET on Nov. 1, the company's crypto, cash and marketable securities plus what it calls "moonshots" totaled $14.5 billion. The ether is valued at $2,260 per coin, based on HODLFM's pricing. Bitmine also reports 216 BTC, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, an $82 million stake in Eightco Holdings and $498 million in cash and marketable securities.

Bitmine has staked 5,227,037 ETH, worth $11.8 billion. That is up from 5,067,309 ETH two weeks earlier and unchanged from the week before. Staking runs partly through MAVAN, the Made in America VAlidator Network, which the company launched earlier this year. Lee said current staking revenue is about $358 million a year. If all its ether were staked, the figure would reach $415 million, using a 3.03% seven-day yield.

The ether position alone is worth about $13.7 billion at the quoted price, so a $100 move in ETH shifts the holdings by roughly $606 million.

Weekly buying keeps slowing

Bitmine says it has bought ether every week since it began its treasury strategy on June 30, 2025. The pace has dropped, though. Purchases fell from 15,112 ETH in the week ending Oct. 5 to 12,532 and 12,535 ETH in the next two weeks. They then fell to 10,452 ETH and now 8,573 ETH. The company's largest weekly buy in the list it published was 138,452 ETH, in the week ending Dec. 8, 2025.

Bitmine calls itself the largest ether treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury worldwide, behind Strategy Inc. Strategy reportedly holds 848,517 BTC, valued at about $71 billion. Bitmine's 9.5% perpetual preferred shares trade as BMNP and pay dividends weekly.

Lee's case on the Binance theft

Lee called the hack "a terrible development" but said the market response is encouraging.

"While this is a terrible development, in my view, the relatively muted crypto market reaction is very constructive, particularly compared to the market's response to prior sizable crypto thefts," he said.

He compared it with the Bybit theft of February 2025, which also involved North Korea. Ether fell 8% the day Bybit disclosed the loss and was down 20% within a week. Since Binance disclosed its theft, Lee said, ether is down 4%, even though the amount stolen is about four times larger.

Lee gave six reasons for the calmer reaction. Binance can cover customer losses, and no cascade of DeFi protocol failures followed. Swift action across the industry cut the potential loss by 50%. The FBI named North Korea within two days, while Lee says it has taken as long as 180 days in past cases. He also said the attack was a corporate infiltration, not a blockchain exploit.

"We believe this is a sign that the crypto industry is increasingly resilient and more capable of absorbing these nation-state assaults on financial infrastructure," he said.

What the comparison leaves out

Bitmine holds billions of dollars in ether, so Lee has a financial stake in how the market reads this event. The 4% figure also covers a different period from the Bybit one, and the market was already falling before the breach.

Ether dropped 5.2% to $2,190 late on the Thursday of the breach, and that $1.55 billion in positions were liquidated over 24 hours, mostly longs.

Binance's own account of the entry point has shifted. Its first post pointed to a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, and a later update said investigators had found "additional points of breach." Lee's release describes a contractor infiltrating corporate systems.

The exchange's recovery is still under way. Binance reported a net outflow of about $3.64 billion on Nov. 1, its first day of resumed withdrawals, or 2.1% of its $171 billion in assets under management. The FBI said the attackers were moving stolen funds mainly into ether, which it expects will be laundered through DeFi and instant swap services.

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