Tom Lee says Ethereum has never failed this pattern and expects another V-shaped recovery

BitMine bought around $83 million worth of ETH this week, while Ethereum is struggling to recover $2,000.

Ethereum has remained volatile since October, while the sell-off has increased over the past month. Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat, said investor frustration over the leading altcoin’s recent weakness ignores a long and consistent historical pattern of sharp declines followed by an equally rapid recovery.

In fact, he believes the bottom is near.

Ethereum almost at the bottom?

While speak At a conference in Hong Kong this week, Lee said Ethereum has experienced declines of more than 50% on eight different drawdowns since 2018, including a steep 64% drop between January and March last year. In all these cases, ETH formed a ‘V-shaped bottom’, which fully recovered and did so at about the same pace as the decline. From his perspective, this track record indicates that the current decline does not represent any change in Ethereum’s prospects, and he expects a new V-shaped bottom to emerge after the latest sell-off.

Lee also cited the assessment of BitMine market analyst Tom DeMark, who believes Ethereum may need to revisit the $1,890 level to form a “perfected bottom.” Lee added that, based on BitMine’s assessment, ETH appears to be very close to such a low, as he drew parallels to previous recessions in late 2018, late 2022 and April 2025.

While Lee refrained from pinpointing the exact bottom, he argued that the size of the decline itself is more important, and that investors should think in terms of opportunity rather than losing their stock.

“If you have already seen a decline, you should be thinking about opportunities here instead of selling.”

BitMine is buying

His comments came as the Ether price fell to $1,760 on February 6, nearing a 2025 low of almost $1,400. So far, ETH has struggled to regain the $2,000 level after dropping more than 36% in the past 30 days. As market weakness continues, BitMine, the ETH-focused treasury company led by Lee, purchased approximately $83 million worth of ETH this week.

It made two major purchases of 20,000 ETH each through institutional platforms BitGo and FalconX, even as existing holdings remained significantly underwater.

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In the meantime, the downturn has already led to large-scale portfolio adjustments. For example, Trend Research, a trading firm led by Liquid Capital founder Jack Yi, exited its Ethereum positions entirely and closed what was once Asia’s largest ETH long. The company had built up about $2.1 billion in leveraged ETH exposure, but ultimately realized losses of about $869 million after unwinding its positions, despite Yi reiterating his optimistic long-term outlook just days earlier.