South Korean Funeral Firm Loses $33 Million on BitMine Ethereum ETF

South Korean funeral firm Bumo Sarang has booked an unrealized $33 million loss on a leveraged crypto bet. The country’s seventh-largest provider channeled around $40 million of customers’ prepaid funds into a 2x leveraged BitMine ETF.

The disclosure appeared in Bumo Sarang’s 2025 audit filed with South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission. The company called the shortfall a temporary market move that it can absorb from its financial buffer.

How the leveraged BitMine ETF Bet Collapsed

Local media reported that Bumo Sarang routed 59.5 billion won, near $40 million, into the T-REX 2X Long BMNR Daily Target ETF.

The U.S.-listed REX Shares product targets a return twice that of BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR). By the end of 2025, the holding’s book value had fallen to 10.2 billion won, around $6.8 million.

BitMine operates as an Ethereum treasury, holding millions of ether as its primary asset. That exposure left the ETF directly tied to the altcoin’s slide this year.

Ethereum (ETH) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto

Daily leveraged products also lose value through volatility decay in choppy markets.

A Regulatory Blind Spot in Prepaid Funeral Funds

The episode has exposed how loosely South Korea polices prepaid funeral funds. The sector sits under the Fair Trade Commission as a prepaid installment business, not any financial regulator.

The only binding rule requires firms to hold half of customer prepayments in reserve. The remaining half can be deployed in almost anything, including high-risk securities.

“This should be illegal,” said analyst Bull Theory.

A Korea Economic Daily review of 75 providers found 43% hold fewer assets than prepayments owed.

Six bills now sit in the National Assembly to ban speculative investments and related-party lending in the sector.

Bumo Sarang has not signaled any plan to unwind the position. Customer prepayments now hang on whatever BitMine and ether do next.

The case strengthens calls in Seoul for tighter rules before the next funeral firm chases similar returns.

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