Bitmine (BMNR), the largest Ethereum mining company, increased its purchases of Ether (ETH) last week, making its biggest weekly purchase of 2026 as crypto prices surged.
The firm bought 126,971 ETH over the past week, worth about $214 million at current prices, Bitmine said Monday, compared with 26,497 tokens the previous week and nearly 120,000 ETH the week before.
The purchase lifted the firm’s total holdings to 5.54 million ETH, worth about $9.3 billion at current prices, according to the report. The firm also had $247 million in cash, some bitcoin and stock in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings.
The acquisition marks a reversal from the company’s previous call to curb accumulation as it nears its goal of removing 5% of ether’s outstanding supply. The company now holds 4.59% of the token’s supply and is set to reach the 5% target later this year.
“We increased our buying as we believe this decline in ETH prices does not reflect the strengthening of Ethereum’s fundamentals,” Bitmine chairman Thomas Lee said in a statement.
Bitmine has remained one of the few major digital assets still actively adding to its crypto holdings, while most peers have stopped buying and turned to selling as crypto prices have fallen significantly since October. That bet is based on an estimated paper loss of $9.6 billion as ETH fell to its weakest price in more than a year, down about 65% from its August record.
The firm also unveiled plans to issue a dividend-paying preferred stock class to raise more funds, taking a page from the bitcoin-centric strategy playbook.
However, that model has come under the spotlight of investors. Investors are now debating whether Strategy will comfortably be able to pay its dividend obligations or shore up liquidity as bitcoin prices fell sharply last week. STRC, the firm’s latest preferred stock class, fell to $90 on Friday, about 10% below par, underscoring those concerns.
