BitMine Immersion Technologies has sharply increased its Ethereum accumulation, making its largest weekly ether purchase since June as Chairman Tom Lee argues that cryptocurrency’s strong third-quarter performance could encourage institutional investors to increase their exposure to digital assets.
The company acquired 53,501 ether during the latest week, extending its buying spree for a second consecutive week.
At an ether price of roughly $2,455 on Monday, the purchase was worth approximately $131.3 million.
The acquisition was considerably larger than BitMine’s purchase one week earlier, when the company added 32,447 ETH.
Following the latest transaction, BitMine’s total Ethereum holdings increased to 5,901,112 ETH.
At prices around $2,455, that position was worth approximately $14.5 billion. BitMine’s own August 30 valuation, which used an ether price of $2,511, placed the ETH position closer to $14.8 billion.
The latest purchases represent a noticeable acceleration after BitMine slowed its accumulation during portions of July and August.
Weekly acquisitions fell below 10,000 ETH several times over the summer as the company moved increasingly close to its long-standing objective of controlling 5% of Ethereum’s circulating supply.
BitMine now owns approximately 4.9% of Ethereum’s roughly 120.7 million-token supply.
At the current supply level, owning exactly 5% would require approximately 6.04 million ETH.
That leaves BitMine roughly 134,000 ETH short of reaching the target.
The company describes that objective as its “Alchemy of 5%” strategy.
BitMine says it has reached approximately 98% of that goal only about 15 months after launching its Ethereum treasury strategy.
The company began the strategy on June 30, 2025 and says it has purchased ether during every one of the 65 weeks since then.
The renewed buying comes during a particularly strong period for cryptocurrency markets.
Ether surged approximately 55% during August, while bitcoin advanced roughly 34%, allowing both cryptocurrencies to substantially outperform major U.S. equity indexes.
Lee believes that performance could have an important psychological effect on large investors.
His argument is that institutional investors pay close attention to relative returns across asset classes. When cryptocurrency dramatically outperforms equities and other major macro assets, portfolio managers have a stronger incentive to reconsider how much crypto they hold.
BitMine calculated that ether had outperformed the S&P 500 by approximately 5,430 basis points during the third quarter through August 28.
A basis point equals one-hundredth of a percentage point, meaning 5,430 basis points represents a difference of 54.3 percentage points.
Lee described ether as the strongest-performing major macro asset of the quarter so far.
He also noted that ether, bitcoin and solana represented the three best-performing assets tracked by the company since June 30.
BitMine believes that type of relative strength could set the stage for considerably larger institutional cryptocurrency purchases during the final months of 2026.
Lee sees several potential catalysts supporting that outlook.
One is an anticipated congressional vote involving U.S. cryptocurrency market-structure legislation in September.
Lee has specifically pointed to the CLARITY Act, with a vote expected around the middle of September, as a potential regulatory catalyst for the industry.
Clearer rules governing digital assets could make cryptocurrencies easier for banks, asset managers and other regulated financial companies to adopt.
Institutional investors have historically cited uncertain U.S. regulation as one of the obstacles preventing greater participation in cryptocurrency markets.
BitMine also sees renewed cryptocurrency demand from South Korean investors as another positive development.
Lee said Korean investors have started increasing their crypto purchases again while rotating some capital away from artificial-intelligence stocks.
South Korea has historically been one of the world’s most active retail cryptocurrency markets, making shifts in Korean investor behavior significant for global trading activity.
Another part of Lee’s outlook involves cryptocurrency’s traditional four-year market cycle.
He believes the current cycle could be approaching a bottom within the next several weeks.
If that interpretation proves correct, BitMine expects improving market conditions to coincide with increasing institutional participation during the remaining months of the year.
The company’s longer-term Ethereum thesis extends beyond cryptocurrency prices themselves.
Lee believes two structural trends could substantially increase Ethereum usage: the tokenization of traditional financial assets and the emergence of artificial-intelligence agents capable of independently conducting economic transactions.
Tokenization involves representing assets such as stocks, bonds, funds, real estate or other financial instruments on blockchain networks.
Major financial institutions have increasingly experimented with issuing and settling assets through blockchain infrastructure.
BitMine believes Ethereum could become one of the primary networks supporting that transformation.
Lee also expects autonomous AI systems to eventually use public blockchains to send payments, own assets, execute contracts and interact financially without requiring conventional banking infrastructure for every transaction.
That concept, often described as agentic AI, has become an increasingly important part of BitMine’s investment argument for Ethereum.
Lee expects those developments to strengthen Ethereum relative to bitcoin during the next cryptocurrency cycle.
Historically, the ratio between ether and bitcoin has increased during periods when new Ethereum applications created additional demand for the network.
Initial coin offerings contributed to Ethereum adoption during the 2017 and 2018 cycle.
Nonfungible tokens became an important driver during the 2020 and 2021 period.
Stablecoins played a major role in Ethereum activity during the following cycle.
Lee believes tokenized Wall Street assets and AI-driven blockchain activity could provide the next major sources of demand.
BitMine is not simply holding its enormous Ethereum position while waiting for prices to rise.
The company has also moved most of its ETH into staking.
As of August 30, approximately 5,067,309 ETH had been staked.
That represents roughly 86% of BitMine’s total Ethereum holdings.
At the company’s August 30 reference price of $2,511 per ether, those staked assets were worth approximately $12.7 billion.
Ethereum staking allows holders to commit ETH to the network’s proof-of-stake system, helping validate transactions and secure the blockchain in exchange for rewards.
That provides BitMine with an additional source of revenue beyond changes in Ethereum’s market price.
BitMine said its staking operations recently generated an annualized seven-day yield of approximately 2.67%.
Based on current activity, the company projects annualized staking revenue of roughly $340 million.
If BitMine eventually stakes its full Ethereum position through its own infrastructure and outside staking partners, the company estimates annual staking rewards could approach $396 million at similar yields.
BitMine is developing its own staking infrastructure through MAVAN, short for Made in America Validator Network.
The platform was initially designed to support BitMine’s enormous corporate Ethereum treasury.
The company now intends to expand MAVAN so outside institutional investors, custodians and other organizations can also use the infrastructure.
BitMine is already the largest corporate holder of Ethereum in the world.
It also describes itself as the second-largest corporate cryptocurrency treasury overall, trailing only Strategy, the company led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor that has accumulated an enormous bitcoin position.
BitMine’s broader portfolio extends beyond Ethereum.
As of August 30, the company reported owning 211 bitcoin.
It also held approximately $541 million in cash and marketable securities.
BitMine reported a $180 million investment in Beast Industries and an approximately $81 million investment in Eightco Holdings.
The company refers to investments such as Eightco and Beast Industries as its “moonshot” portfolio.
When Ethereum, bitcoin, cash, marketable securities and those investments are combined, BitMine valued its total holdings at approximately $15.6 billion.
BitMine has attracted support from a collection of prominent cryptocurrency and investment-industry participants.
The company has identified investors including ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood, Founders Fund, Bill Miller III, Pantera Capital, Kraken, Digital Currency Group, Galaxy Digital, MOZAYYX and Lee himself.
BitMine was also added to the Russell 1000 large-cap index on June 26.
Its Series A preferred stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BMNP, while BitMine’s common shares trade under BMNR.
The company says BMNR has become one of the more actively traded stocks in the United States.
Using Fundstrat data, BitMine said its common shares produced approximately $1.36 billion in average daily dollar trading volume over the five trading days through August 29.
That placed the stock around 62nd among thousands of U.S.-listed companies by that measurement.
The aggressive Ethereum strategy nevertheless carries substantial risk.
BitMine’s balance sheet is highly exposed to fluctuations in ether’s market price.
A sharp decline in Ethereum could significantly reduce the reported value of the company’s assets.
Staking also introduces operational and technical risks, including changes to Ethereum’s reward structure, validator problems, cybersecurity incidents and penalties known as slashing.
Future staking revenue will also depend on Ethereum prices, staking yields and the amount of ETH BitMine ultimately commits to validators.
Lee’s expectations for increased institutional cryptocurrency demand are similarly forecasts rather than guarantees.
Congressional legislation could change or face delays, investor behavior in Korea could reverse, cryptocurrency’s historical market cycles may not repeat, and projected demand from tokenization or artificial intelligence could develop more slowly than expected.
For now, however, BitMine is accelerating rather than retreating from its Ethereum strategy.
After slowing acquisitions earlier in the summer, the company has now increased purchases for two consecutive weeks and added more than 85,000 ETH across those two periods.
The latest 53,501-token purchase represents its biggest weekly addition since June.
With approximately 5.90 million ETH already under its control, BitMine is now within roughly 134,000 tokens of its goal of owning 5% of Ethereum’s entire supply.
Lee believes cryptocurrency’s third-quarter rally could help provide the institutional demand needed to support the next phase of the market.
If that thesis proves correct, BitMine will enter that period holding one of the largest concentrated Ethereum positions ever assembled by a publicly traded company.