Tom Lee's Bitmine Buys Another $31 Million in Ethereum, But There's a Catch

Bitmine Chair Tom Lee is still buying Ethereum — but it seems like the buying spree is running out of gas.

Lee announced his Ethereum treasury company Bitmine purchased another $31.6 million in ETH last week, but also made clear that the company does not intend to acquire more than 5% of the total outstanding supply. As of Monday, his company sits at 4.9% of outstanding ETH, or 6.03 million tokens, meaning purchases are just a few months away from starting to run off

"The accumulation of a majority of our 6 million ETH took place in the midst of a crypto bear market and with the Company nearing our 5% ETH accumulation target, we believe the company is attractively positioned ahead of the coming crypto bull," Lee said in a new release.

But despite the current macro set up potentially triggering the "largest ever crypto bull market" according to Lee, he believes 5% is the right overall level to target for now. As Lee recently highlighted in an interview with Coinage, the thinking is that new assets being tokenized on Ethereum will provide a larger and larger bid for blockspace — potentially reducing the need of a price-insensitive buyer like Bitmine.

That is a bit of a break from the thinking last year, when Lee told Coinage at Korea Blockchain Week that 10% of all outstanding Ethereum could potentially be a suitable target.

"I think that there is a much larger cohort of new investors that are going to come to crypto, and I think that's what differentiates it," he said, distinguishing his predicted new run to $5,000 from the 2017 ICO boom, or the NFT-led cycle after the pandemic lockdowns. "But with tokenization coming in a very large way, and a pro-crypto regulatory backdrop, and then of course, government support at a time when AI... and a lot of applications [are] being built around crypto, I think it's a much larger universe of people that are going to get involved."

Fundstrat Head of Digital Asset Strategy Sean Farrell sees a bullish set up for crypto for a different reason. With yields rising to levels not seen for two decades, the U.S. Treasury and Secretary Scott Bessent have grown increasingly active in trying to beat yields lower.

So far, the interventions have had mixed results, but the expectations of further policy intervention has raised the specter of crypto standing to benefit.

“It leads to monetary debasement,” Farrell said. “And monetary debasement leads to Bitcoin outperformance.”

As Lee points out, Bitmine has been able to not only outperform Ethereum's performance, but has done so in a way that is distinguished from the largest Bitcoin treasury company in Strategy.

"We believe that as crypto enters a cycle we expect to be a bull market, what is notable is Bitmine's share price outperformance of ETH during the bear market of 2025-2026. In the first 9 months of 2026, ETH declined 10% while BMNR was down by 3%, or outperformance of 731bp," Lee said.

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