Tom Lee's Bitmine Buys Another $46 Million Worth of Ethereum
Bitmine is closing in on its goal to obtain 5% of all outstanding Ethereum.
By Zack Guzman
September 28, 2026
Tom Lee’s Bitmine just bought another $46 million worth of Ethereum, pushing its holdings above 6 million ETH for the first time as the company closes in on its goal of owning 5% of the cryptocurrency’s entire supply.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies said Monday that it acquired another 17,362 ETH over the past week, worth roughly $46.8 million.
The latest buy brings Bitmine’s total holdings to 6,001,302 ETH, worth approximately $16.2 billion, and now roughly 4.9% of all outstanding Ethereum.
In a new interview with Coinage, Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee recently explained how Bitmine settled on owning 5% of Ethereum — and why that number could increase.
“We thought 5% was an important level because that was a quantity of ETH held that we thought we could have a positive influence on the Ethereum ecosystem,” Lee told Coinage. “We also thought it would take five years.”
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Instead, Bitmine is nearly there just 15 months after launching its Ethereum treasury strategy last year.
And it hasn’t stopped buying. “Bitmine has bought ETH each and every week since the inception of the ETH Treasury Strategy on June 30, 2025,” Lee said. The continued accumulation comes as Lee grows increasingly bullish on Ethereum itself.
“In our view, institutions are still underweight crypto and we expect them to be adding to their exposure in the final months of 2026,” Lee said.
That echoes the bullish outlook Lee laid out in his recent Coinage interview. Unlike prior crypto cycles driven by individual trends like ICOs, NFTs, memecoins or stablecoins, Lee argues the current cycle could draw in a much larger pool of capital as Wall Street embraces tokenization and artificial intelligence creates new potential use cases for blockchains.
“When we have this bull market, it's going to be not only a decisive breakout, but I think the ultimate length and upside is much greater than past cycles,” Lee told Coinage.
That matters considerably more to Bitmine now than it did just over a year ago. With more than 6 million ETH on its balance sheet, the company has effectively transformed itself into a massive publicly traded bet on Ethereum — but one that can also generate yield from its holdings.
Bitmine said 5,067,309 ETH, or roughly 84% of its total position, is currently staked. At $2,698 per ETH, that staked position is worth about $13.7 billion.
The company said its staking operations generated a seven-day annualized yield of 2.62%, putting projected annual staking revenue at approximately $358 million. If Bitmine eventually stakes its entire ETH position through its MAVAN platform and other staking partners, Lee said annualized staking rewards could reach approximately $424 million at the same yield.
It took less than 15 months for Lee and Bitmine to accumulate more than 6 million ETH. Now, with the company just shy of controlling 5% of the entire supply, the question is what comes after the “Alchemy of 5%.”
When Coinage recently asked Lee whether Bitmine could eventually raise that target to 10%, he didn’t reveal the company’s next move.
“You definitely want to stay tuned,” Lee said ahead of his keynote at Korea Blockchain Week this week.
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