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An 80% failure usually marks the end of speculative trading. In South Korea’s retail cryptocurrency ecosystem, the result has been the opposite.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, the US company backed by Tom Lee that reinvented itself as a way to store ether, is now second only to Alphabet among the foreign stocks most bought by South Korean investors in 2025.
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The Korean retail sector continues to buy Tom Lee’s Bitmain even as the stock collapses
That position held even as BitMine shares fell about 82% from their peak in July, erasing most of the gains from the explosive rally earlier this year.
According to the analyst on the chain AB Kwai Dong, although BitMine and USDC Circle have collapsed more than 70% from their highs, they are still among the top 10 foreign securities bought by Koreans this year. BitMine was located behind Google’s company, Alphabet Inc.
“Korean brothers offer to buy more, the more they lose.” books.
At the heart of this transformation Radical for Bitmain. The company was previously a marginal Bitcoin miner, but has rebranded itself as an Ether treasure, explicitly reflecting the plan made famous by Michael Saylor’s strategy, but using ETH instead of Bitcoin.
This shift briefly turned Bitmain into a market phenomenon, with its shares rising more than 3,000% to reach a peak in July. The increase came as individual traders rushed to increase exposure to stocks in… The accumulation of Ethereum.
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The hangover was quick. BitMine shares collapsed, volatility increased, and leveraged products linked to the stock suffered a major collapse. However, Korean traders continued to buy.
According to data from a Korean stock fund reported by Bloomberg, South Korean investors have invested a net $ 1.4 billion in BitMine shares in 2025. They also expressed $ 566 million in an exchange-traded fund 2x linked to the shares as losses mounted.
The capital of faith, the logic of hoarding, and Korea’s willingness to buy pain
To outside observers, the behavior appears irrational. Within the original crypto circuits, it follows a familiar market logic. Members of the Korean community attribute this to the “logic of hoarding,” arguing that faith-driven capital flows do not follow price curves.
They said: “Faith capital flow ≠ price curve, this wave in Korea is quite similar to the chain staking logic.”
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The idea is that the infrastructure is more important than the decays. If Ether is a long-term settlement layer, then an ETH-heavy treasury instrument becomes more attractive as prices fall, not less. Social sentiment reflects this perspective.
books Another user: “When it comes to loyalty in the cryptocurrency circle, Koreans are number one in the world,” confirming a long-standing view of South Korea as a market where retail conviction often trumps risk management.
Circle becomes the parallel bet as the Korean retail sector pursues cryptocurrency infrastructure at the expense of price
BitMine is not the only beneficiary of this mentality. Circle Internet Financial, the issuer of the USDC, has also attracted significant Korean inflows.
Korean investors have pumped nearly $1 billion into Circle shares, making it one of the most popular cryptocurrency stocks abroad despite… Strong fluctuations after the initial offer.
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This demand likely stems from the optimism surrounding stablecoin regulation, both in the United States and under the new administration in South Korea, which is pushing to expand access to the local cryptocurrency market and allow stablecoins to be issued locally.
BeInCrypto reported in October that Circle had signed up $2.4 trillion activity in stablecoins in Asia Pacific During the fiscal year June 2024-2025.
In Japan, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) has approved JPYC as the first yen-denominated stablecoin to be launched later this year. Circle invested in JPYC through Series A funding, raising approximately ¥500 million in total.
Together, BitMine and Circle point to a broader thesis at work. Korean fractional investors are not limited to just trading tokens; They are a cryptocurrency infrastructure that is at the forefront of stocks, even when the price action becomes brutal.
More than $10 billion in equity flows from South Korea will occur by 2025. Many of them targeted high-risk topicsincluding cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
Is this insight or normalization of pain? With institutions becoming increasingly optimistic about Bitcoin and digital assets going into 2026, Korean retail markets may be heading ahead for the next cycle. Alternatively, 2026 can redefine the cuts as an acceptable cost of faith.
