BitMine Immersion chairman Tom Lee pushed back against criticism of its growing paper losses this week, saying the drawdown reflected the design of its ethereum treasury strategy rather than a flaw in execution.
In a series of posts on X, Lee said BitMine is built to track the price of ether and outperform it over a full market cycle, likening its structure to an index-style product rather than a tactical trading vehicle.
With crypto markets in a downturn, however, the firm said unrealized losses on its $ETH holdings are inevitable.
“Crypto is in a downturn, so naturally $ETH is down,” Lee wrote, adding that paper losses are “not a bug — it’s a feature,” and questioning whether similar scrutiny is applied to index funds during market declines. $BTC $ #TrumpEndsShutdown
Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao warned crypto investors not to buy a new memecoin launched to capitalize on his popularity, cautioning against the financial risks of trading celebrity-linked tokens with no real blockchain utility.
The memecoin emerged shortly after a fan page built a golden statue of Zhao, sharing pictures and offering to send it to the founder of the world’s largest crypto exchange.
Zhao warned users in a Wednesday X post not to buy the memecoin associated with the statue, as the token's launch signaled that the creators were looking to “make a quick buck off an interaction” with the founder.
“While I want to appreciate the gesture, the fact that there is a meme coin associated with this means the creator probably just wanted to make a quick buck off an interaction from me,” said Zhao. “This is something I don’t appreciate. Don’t buy the meme.”
Bitcoin’s monetary policy is enforced through a unique blend of software, cryptography and financial incentives rather than the whim of trusted third parties. The Bitcoin network is powered by a cryptographically secure, verifiable database called the blockchain — itself a technological phenomenon.
The Bitcoin ecosystem consists of a global network of stakeholders, including the miners that secure the network and drive the issuance of the Bitcoin currency, the traders who speculate on this radically market-driven asset, and the builders working to onboard people to the cryptocurrency paradigm. $BTC
James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, said the market faces unfavorable capital flows, Bitcoin’s decoupling from global money supply trends, geopolitical tensions and uncertainty over US monetary policy amid Kevin Warsh’s designation as Federal Reserve Chair. $BTC
Bitcoin ETFs at $1 billion outflows year-to-date The fresh $562 million of inflows account for a notable portion of year-to-date outflows for spot Bitcoin ETFs, which stood at $1 billion as of Tuesday.
So far this year, total outflows have reached $4.6 billion, offsetting $3.6 billion of inflows, according to SoSoValue data. $BTC
Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) experienced another recovery on Monday amid a challenging market environment for BTC and broader digital assets.
Spot Bitcoin
BTC$75,057
ETFs drew about $562 million of inflows, breaking a four-day outflow streak. $1.5 billion of outflows were recorded last week, according to SoSoValue data.
Despite the uptick, analysts cautioned that ETFs and broader markets are likely to face continued pressure from institutional selling and macro uncertainty, with near-term support potentially sticking around ETF cost basis levels of $84,000.
The inflows came as Bitcoin rebounded on Monday after briefly dipping below $75,000 over the weekend, surging to an intraday high above $79,000, according to CoinGecko.
Bitcoin-backed borrowing at the Gibraltar-based Xapo Bank is increasingly being used for long-term financial planning rather than short-term liquidity, according to the bank’s 2025 Digital Wealth Report.
Shared with Cointelegraph, the report says 52% of the Bitcoin-backed loans issued by Xapo in 2025 carried a 365-day term, with many of those loans remaining open even as new loan creation slowed later in the year.
The bank, which primarily caters to high-net-worth individuals and private clients, said the trend reflects members using Bitcoin as collateral to unlock liquidity while preserving long-term exposure, rather than tapping loans for temporary cash needs.
“Long-term Bitcoiners, many of whom are now holding the majority of their wealth in Bitcoin, finally felt comfortable taking some profit,” the report said. “At the same time, the underlying conviction didn’t waver. Most of our long-term members continued to hold the bulk of their Bitcoin through periods of heavy market movement.” $BTC
With reported assets under custody exceeding $100 billion, BitGo operates at a scale where risk management becomes the core business. Belshe’s description is blunt. “You do it with paranoia and process,” he says.
Security is not a feature bolted onto the platform; it’s the architecture, the culture, the audits, and the elimination of single points of failure. “At scale, risk management is about enforcing segregation, continuously testing assumptions, and making conservative choices even when it’s inconvenient,” he says.
And it extends beyond technology: operational risk, compliance risk, vendor risk, and governance risk. In custody, reputational trust is the ultimate product.
Regulation as Unlock, Not Obstacle
Few crypto executives speak as directly about regulation as Belshe, who has testified before U.S. policymakers in the past. His view is that institutions do not fear regulation; they fear uncertainty. “Institutions don’t fear regulation,” he says. “They fear ambiguity.”
The United States, he argues, needs consistent pathways that allow regulated firms to participate onshore, rather than pushing activity offshore into weaker structures.
“The biggest risks often come from exclusion,” he says. “When the regulated system can’t engage, concentration and structural risk build elsewhere.”
BitGo will continue advocating not for lighter rules, but smarter ones: frameworks that match how the technology works while protecting investors and preventing financial crime.
Tokenization, DeFi, and the Next Financial Rails
Looking ahead, Belshe sees tokenization as more than a buzzword. The promise is faster settlement, transparent markets, and programmable finance, but only if the same institutional principles apply.
“It only works at scale if robust custody, identity, and compliance controls, audited systems, and clear accountability are in place,” $BTC
Profitability and Institutional Compounding BitGo entered the IPO from a position of profitability, a rarity among crypto-native firms. While Belshe avoids granular financial breakdowns beyond what is disclosed in filings, he attributes the performance to institutional durability rather than cycle chasing.
“Profitability comes from building durable, institutional-grade lines of business and running them with operational discipline,” he said.
Infrastructure companies do not win through hype, he argues, but through compounding trust: retention, long-lived client relationships, and services that scale with real activity rather than speculative mania. “Infrastructure businesses win by compounding trust,” he noted.
Control, Governance, and the Long Horizon BitGo’s IPO also brings attention to its dual-class share structure, which leaves Belshe with major voting control. Critics often argue that such setups weaken shareholder power. Belshe sees it differently.
“We’re building critical financial infrastructure,” he says. “That requires long-term decisions that won’t always optimize for the next quarter.”
Security and compliance cannot be sacrificed for short-term earnings beats, he argues, because in custody, trust is existential. “The dual-class structure is designed to protect the mission and the time horizon: security, compliance, and trust first,” he says.
Still, he emphasizes that control does not mean insulation. “Public investors get more transparency, more scrutiny, and clear governance obligations,” he says. “We welcome that scrutiny.” $BTC
Going public introduces a different kind of pressure: quarterly reporting, shareholder expectations, and regulator attention. For some crypto founders, that scrutiny is unwelcome. For Belshe, it is part of the product.
“It makes the roadmap more disciplined and more accountable,” he says. “You don’t get to hand-wave priorities when you’re reporting as a public company.”
BitGo’s mission remains unchanged—to build the most trusted platform for digital asset financial services—but public markets demand sharper execution. “What changes is the rigor: clearer timelines, tighter prioritization, and an even stronger emphasis on resilience, controls, audits, and operational excellence,” he says.
Unlike exchanges built around retail flow, BitGo has never positioned itself as a trading destination. Instead, it has focused on what institutions actually require to participate in crypto markets responsibly: custody, wallet technology, settlement workflows, prime brokerage services, stablecoin rails, and compliance architecture.

“BitGo isn’t a retail exchange,” Belshe explains. “We’re the underlying infrastructure that institutions rely on.” That distinction is more than branding. It is also a response to the industry’s most painful lessons. “A core lesson from past failures is that vertically integrated models can create dangerous single points of failure,” he says.
BitGo’s philosophy is rooted in separation. Custody should not sit inside the same entity as trading, market making, or clearing. That structural division, familiar in traditional finance, is precisely what Belshe believes crypto needs to survive its next phase.
“The long-term health of this market depends on separating roles,” he says. “That’s exactly where BitGo has focused for years.”
The timing of BitGo’s listing is striking. Crypto markets remain volatile, and the public markets have not always been kind to digital asset firms. Yet Belshe frames the decision as almost inevitable, not opportunistic but structural. “The strategic rationale is straightforward: more transparency, more access, and a stronger platform for long-term institutional adoption,” he says.
For BitGo, becoming a public company is not simply a capital event. It is a governance statement. Disclosure and accountability, Belshe argues, are features when your business is safeguarding billions of dollars in client assets. “It raises the bar on disclosure and governance,” he says. “That’s a feature, not a bug, when your job is safeguarding client assets.”
Mike Belshe is not trying to build the loudest company in crypto. He is trying to build the most trusted one. As CEO and co-founder of BitGo, Belshe has spent the last decade positioning the firm as the institutional backbone of digital assets; the custody provider, settlement engine, and compliance infrastructure that large financial players can actually underwrite.
Now, with BitGo becoming the first crypto IPO of 2026, he believes the market is finally catching up to that vision. “We went public because the industry is maturing,” Belshe told CryptoNews in an interview. “Institutions want infrastructure they can diligence, underwrite, and trust over long time horizons.”
In an industry still defined by cycles of hype, collapse, and reinvention, BitGo’s public debut marks something different: a bet that crypto’s future belongs less to speculative trading and more to regulated financial plumbing. $BTC