South Korean Funeral Firm Takes $33 Million Hit on Leveraged Ether ETF Bet

Bumo Sarang, South Korea’s seventh-largest funeral mutual-aid company, invested prepaid funeral fees in a leveraged exchange-traded fund linked to BitMine, an Ether treasury company. The case matters because funeral mutual-aid operators are classified as prepaid installment businesses and supervised by the Korea Fair Trade Commission rather than financial regulators. Rules require them to safeguard only 50% of customer prepayments, leaving a regulatory gap over how the balance is invested.

A 2025 audit report disclosed on May 19, 2026, showed Bumo Sarang put 59.5 billion won, about $40 million, into the T-REX 2X Long BMNR Daily Target ETF (BMNU), which targets twice BitMine’s daily return. The holding was worth 10.2 billion won at the end of 2025, leaving an unrealized loss of 49.3 billion won, or $32.7 million. A wider review found 43% of 75 audited funeral-service companies had assets below customer advances.