Bitmine nears self-set target of owning 5% of all ether
Macro & Markets ·
The company added 15,112 ETH over the past week, pushing its stake to 4.9% of circulating supply and 99% of the way toward its stated goal.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies now holds 6.02 million ETH tokens, valued at $2,726 per coin as of October 4 at 6:30pm ET, according to a company announcement. That stake equals 4.9% of the 122.1 million ETH total supply, placing the firm within striking distance of the 5% threshold it has pursued for roughly 15 months. Separate coverage of the latest purchase, tracked by wublockchain.xyz, confirms the 15,112 ETH addition and the resulting proximity to the ownership target.
Alongside the ether position, Bitmine reported combined holdings of $17.4 billion across crypto, cash, marketable securities, and what it calls "moonshot" investments. That figure includes 214 Bitcoin, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, a $117 million stake in Eightco Holdings, and $643 million in cash and marketable securities. Of the ETH total, 5,067,309 tokens are staked, representing $13.8 billion at current prices, through the MAVAN validator network built for Bitmine and institutional partners.
Chairman Thomas "Tom" Lee framed the accumulation strategy against broader market performance, noting that ether fell 10% in the first nine months of 2026 while Bitmine's share price declined only 3%, an outperformance gap of 731 basis points. He also pointed to a 6,832 basis-point outperformance of ETH relative to the S&P 500 in the third quarter, attributing resilience to the asset despite a hawkish Federal Reserve, rising oil prices, and tightening financial conditions. Lee credited part of the equity performance to a buyback program that retired 21 million shares during 2026.
The company's institutional backers include Cathie Wood's ARK, MOZAYYX, Founders Fund, Bill Miller III, Pantera, Kraken, DCG, and Galaxy Digital, alongside Lee himself as a personal investor. Bitmine's Series A Preferred Stock trades on the NYSE under the symbol BMNP, and the firm was added to the Russell 1000 Large-cap index in June. Lee is scheduled to deliver a keynote at Token2049 in Singapore on October 7.
What remains unclear is the timeline for closing the final gap to the 5% supply target, and whether the pace of weekly ETH purchases will continue at a similar scale as the company approaches its stated ceiling.