Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), the ether (ETH) financial company led by Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee, bought 101,901 ETH over the past week, pushing its total holdings to over 5 million tokens of the second largest cryptocurrency.
The purchase lifted the firm’s ETH cache to 5,078,386 tokens, or about 4.21% of ether’s circulating supply, according to a Monday update. Bitmine reached this milestone in about 10 months since it switched to a digital asset financial strategy firm from a bitcoin miner in June.
“Bitmine ETH holdings crossed 5 million last week,” Lee said. “This is a major milestone as the company moves towards acquiring 5% of the ETH supply.”
The latest purchase, worth around $236 million at current ETH prices, extends a string of major weekly purchases as Bitmine increases its position while most digital assets remain on the sidelines.
The firm’s total crypto and cash holdings are $13.3 billion. Alongside its ETH position, the firm holds 200 bitcoin $940 million in cash and equity stakes including investments in Beast Industries and Worldcoin-focused Eightco Holdings.
The company has also expanded its staking operations to generate returns on its ETH holdings. About 3.7 million tokens — about 73% of its holdings — are now staked, generating about $264 million in annual revenue. The firm debuted its Mavan leveraged platform in March to attract institutional clients alongside supporting its own treasury operations.
BMNR shares were unchanged in premarket trading after the update.
Ether as a ‘store of value in wartime’
Lee framed ether’s role as shifting beyond a speculative asset. Citing recent research from Etherealize, he said ETH is increasingly being treated as a “store of value” and security as digital assets gain traction in financial transactions.
He also added that ETH has outperformed the S&P 500 since the start of the Iran conflict and pointed to growing use cases such as tokenization and AI systems that rely on public blockchains as a long-term tailwind for the asset.
“It makes a lot of sense that ETH is the best ‘wartime store of value’ and that ETH is the asset that has led since the war started,” Lee said.
