Three whales bet on ETH. Now they're $9.5B under
Tom Lee holds. Trend Research folded. HyperUnit vanished
They all believed in Ethereum. Wall Street, a leveraged hedge fund, a mysterious whale.
Three different strategies. One asset. Combined realized and unrealized losses: $9.5 billion.
Their stories are not just about leverage and liquidation. They are about conviction, denial, and refusal.
Ethereum trades at $1,957 at the time of writing.
Tom Lee: the Wall Street holder
Tom Lee runs BitMine, a mining firm he transformed into the world's largest Ethereum treasury.
His strategy is straightforward: raise equity, buy ETH, stake it, hold. No leverage. No exit. As of February 2026, BitMine holds 4.32 million ETH.
Average entry: $3,849.
Current value: $8.45 billion.
Cost basis: $16.63 billion.
Unrealized loss: $8.18 billion.
Lee isn't selling. He's buying more. On February 10, BitMine added another 40,613 ETH.
He has staked over 2.9 million ETH, earning $470,000 in daily staking yield. At this pace, he'll break even in 48 years.
"With no debt covenants or forced clauses, there's no pressure to sell," Lee said. "We have the financial strength to ride out volatility."
Trend Research: the Leveraged Genius who blinked
Jack Yi's Trend Research executed a different playbook. Not equity. Leverage.
They deposited ETH on Aave, borrowed stablecoins, and reinvested into more ETH. Recursive. Aggressive. Lucrative—until it wasn't.
At peak, Trend held 651,757 ETH worth $2.1 billion.
Average cost: $3,180.
Total cost: $2.07 billion
As ETH bled toward $2,000, liquidation crept closer. On February 7, Trend sold everything to Binance at an average exit price of $2,055.
Total proceeds: $1.34 billion.
Realized loss: $869 million.
Some say forced exits like this mark bottoms. Others see a risk manager who simply ran out of time.
HyperUnit: the Whale who vanished
Not all whales make headlines. Some just fade out.
The trader, known as HyperUnit – linked to former BitForex CEO Garrett Jin – made a name for himself in October 2025 by shorting Bitcoin and Ethereum minutes before Trump's tariff announcement, pocketing $200 million.
Then he flipped long.
By January 2026, he had built an ETH position worth over $730 million. His average entry is estimated at $2,850–$3,100.
As prices collapsed, his unrealized losses swelled past $130 million. On January 31, he sold everything.
Estimated proceeds: $500 million.
Estimated realized loss: $250 million.
His Hyperliquid account balance today? $53.
No press release. No analyst quotes. No Twitter thread explaining the exit. HyperUnit's silence says it all – sometimes conviction ends quietly.
Standard Chartered predicts 2026 will be Ethereum's year. BlackRock is building around tokenization. Vitalik keeps shipping upgrades.
The thesis these whales bet billions on? It's not broken. It's actually working.
Fees are down 90%. Layer 2s now process millions of transactions daily. Adoption is real.
Only one thing hasn't arrived: the price.
Tom Lee sees a lag, not a loss. He keeps buying.
Trend Research saw a $747M hole and pulled the plug.
HyperUnit saw $250M evaporate and walked away.
You don't have to be a whale to have conviction – you just have to pick a side.