Tom Lee's BitMine Makes Biggest Ethereum Buy Yet in 2026

In brief

• BitMine added nearly 112,000 ETH valued around $237 million last week, its biggest ETH-denominated buy this year.
• The firm now holds nearly 5.4 million ETH and is greater than 88% of the way to its pursuit of 5% of the circulating token supply.
• Shares of BMNR have jumped more than 4% in early trading on Tuesday.

Publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies added 111,942 ETH, or more than $237 million worth, to its balance sheet last week, marking the firm’s largest buy yet this year as denominated in ETH.

The purchase brings the firm’s total holdings to 5,390,404 ETH valued around $11.4 billion as Ethereum trades around $2,117 on Tuesday morning.

BitMine now holds more than 4.4% of the circulating ETH token supply, better than 88% of the way to its goal of hitting 5%—a feat it anticipates achieving “sometime in 2026,” according to its chairman, Tom Lee. 

(Disclaimer: Tom Lee is an investor in Decrypt’s parent company, Dastan).

Lee recently telegraphed that the firm would slow down its Ethereum purchase velocity, as it didn’t wish to reach the 5% mark too quickly. However, with ETH trading below $2,200, the BitMine frontman said last week that the firm viewed this as an “attractive opportunity” to add to its position. 

"We continue to expect a supercycle ahead for crypto and Ethereum, driven by the dual drivers of Wall Street tokenization and agentic-AI. And thus, we continue to steadily acquire ETH, with BitMine now owning nearly 5.4 million ETH tokens,” he said in a statement. 

Of the firm’s 5.39 million ETH, more than 4.7 million ETH—or almost $10 billion worth—is being staked via its industrial staking platform, the Made in America Validator Network (MAVAN). Based on its current staking numbers, BitMine anticipates annualized staking revenues of more than $276 million. 

Shares of BitMine (BMNR) have jumped around 3.3% since the opening bell, recently changing hands at $19.51. At that mark, shares have fallen nearly 12% in the last month and more than 38% in the last six months of trading.

But the firm expects a liquidity injection next month as it gets added to the Russell 1000 index, an index that tracks the 1,000 largest companies in the United States. Ahead of its inclusion, Lee hinted that passive index funds and ETFs may create a wave of automated demand. 

The firm’s treasury asset, Ethereum, has dropped 2% in the last 24 hours to trade around $2,078. The second-largest crypto asset by market cap has fallen more than 11% in the last month and remains about 58% off its August all-time high of $4,946.

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