Trader Flood, who posts as @ThinkingUSD, called Ethereum a “contender for the worst asset of all time” on Nov. 13, sharing a dashboard that put BitMine’s unrealized loss at roughly $9 billion.
The dashboard showed the Ethereum treasury company 43% underwater. Its holdings match BitMine’s November disclosure, but its average-cost figure is dated August. Applying that older average to the later balance approximately reproduces the displayed cost, leaving the loss figure dependent on that assumption.
Flood pointed to money lost to hacks, development time spent on inadequate tools, and retail losses from betting on Ethereum’s price. He provided no figures for those categories or comparative data to support an all-time ranking. His criticism targeted Ethereum itself, with the BitMine dashboard serving as a specific example of treasury exposure.
What sits behind the dashboard’s loss estimate
The dashboard Flood shared listed 6,070,092 ETH, a $3,380 average cost, a $20.52 billion total cost basis, and an $11.69 billion market value. Its displayed unrealized loss was $8,829,920,029.
The average-cost field is labeled as the filed average for Aug. 31, 2026. BitMine’s annual accounts reported 5,901,837 ETH at that date, with a cost basis of about $19.95 billion and a fair value of about $14.56 billion. Dividing cost by quantity gives roughly $3,380 per ETH.
Those accounts were filed Nov. 10, but the holdings and cost figures describe the August balance.
BitMine’s Nov. 9 release reported a larger holding of 6,070,092 ETH as of Nov. 8 at 2 p.m. ET. Multiplying that quantity by the rounded August average produces roughly the $20.52 billion cost basis shown on Flood’s dashboard.
That calculation extrapolates across two reporting dates. It reproduces the rounded total without confirming the dashboard’s methodology or establishing what the expanded ETH holding actually cost. The November release provides no updated aggregate cost basis.
The dashboard’s $8.83 billion loss estimate is therefore an unrealized mark against an assumed cost. It offers no evidence that BitMine sold those holdings or realized the loss in cash.
The $8.83B dashboard estimate relies on an older average cost; it is not BitMine’s disclosed current loss.
The Nov. 9 release gives no updated aggregate ETH cost basis. The dashboard does not date its market valuation; its loss is an unrealized estimate, not proceeds from a sale.
The dashboard does not specify when its $11.69 billion market value was measured.
BitMine’s November release used a third observation: $2,234 per ETH from Coinbase for its Nov. 8 snapshot. That was a market valuation price, not an acquisition price.
Lee’s Ethereum thesis predates the post
Lee’s position in the Nov. 9 company release remained bullish. BitMine’s chairman described ETH as trusted collateral and argued that tokenization and AI would reinforce its role as a store of value.
The company also reported 5,227,037 staked ETH as of Nov. 8, a staking position distinct from the market-price gap the dashboard illustrates.
Lee’s comments preceded Flood’s Nov. 13 post and were not a response to it. They laid out the investment thesis behind a treasury position that the trader presented as evidence of Ethereum’s poor performance.
CryptoSlate’s earlier coverage of BitMine’s accounts focused on fiscal-year losses and calculated final-quarter earnings through August. The dashboard presents a separate estimate of the gap between cost and market value.
