On June 22, BitMine disclosed it had bought another 52,203 ETH, worth roughly $92 million, pushing its total Ethereum treasury to 5,672,956 tokens. That same week, the company also showed up as a lead backer of Ethlabs, a newly launched independent research lab staffed by five former Ethereum Foundation researchers and co-funded by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin. One story is about accumulation. The other is about who’s now funding the people building Ethereum’s future. Together, they say a lot about where the largest corporate ETH holder thinks this network is headed.
BitMine’s Latest ETH Purchase: 52,203 Tokens, $92 Million
BitMine bought 52,203 ETH last week at a reference price of $1,733, based on Chairman Tom Lee’s Monday update. That lifts the company’s total treasury to 5,672,956 ETH, about 4.7% of Ethereum’s roughly 120.7 million circulating supply, and worth close to $10 billion at current prices.
The purchase pace has actually slowed compared to BitMine’s buying earlier in 2026. Back in early June, the company bought 127,000 ETH in a single week. The latest buy is less than half that size. That’s by design: BitMine has said it’s now roughly 94% of the way to its long-stated target of holding 5% of Ethereum’s total supply, and Lee has previously said the company doesn’t want to “rush” past that goal.
Total crypto, cash, and securities holdings at BitMine now sit at roughly $10.7 billion. Beyond the ETH position, that includes 205 Bitcoin, $601 million in cash and marketable securities, a $200 million stake in Beast Industries (MrBeast’s company), and a $104 million stake in Eightco Holdings.
Also Read: Mr Beast Crypto Coin Trends as Traders Chase Viral Tokens Amid Speculation
How Much Ethereum Does BitMine Own?
As of this week, BitMine holds 5,672,956 ETH, roughly 4.7% of everything in circulation. That makes it the largest publicly disclosed corporate holder of Ethereum, ahead of SharpLink Gaming, the second-largest treasury firm, which holds closer to 876,000 ETH.
Most of BitMine’s stack isn’t sitting idle. The company has staked 4.72 million ETH, more than 83% of its total holdings, through its own validator infrastructure, called MAVAN (Made-in-America Validator Network). That staked position is currently generating an annualized yield of about 2.73%, which works out to roughly $223 million a year in staking revenue. If BitMine eventually stakes its entire ETH balance, it projects that figure could climb to around $268 million annually.
That staking income matters for a reason beyond yield. BitMine recently issued $274 million in 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, trading on the NYSE under the ticker BMNP, to help fund further ETH purchases. The dividend on that preferred stock has to come from somewhere, and Lee has said staking revenue is what’s backing those weekly payouts.
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Why Is BitMine Buying More Ethereum?
Tom Lee’s argument hasn’t really changed since BitMine pivoted from a Bitcoin mining business to an Ethereum treasury strategy back in June 2025, it’s just gotten louder. He believes Ethereum is underpriced relative to where stablecoin and tokenization activity is heading, and he’s framed the current market as the early stage of what he calls a “crypto spring”: a recovery phase following the steep liquidation event in October 2025.
The company’s operating thesis rests on a few specific bets. Stablecoins are growing fast, and Ethereum still dominates that market with roughly 53% share of the $300 billion sector. Tokenized real-world assets are also concentrating on Ethereum, with the network hosting close to half of the $32 billion tokenized asset market. And increasingly, Lee and others in the space are pointing to AI agents as a future source of on-chain transaction demand, autonomous systems that will need a settlement layer to move value, and that, in this thesis, is Ethereum.
BitMine calls its overall strategy “the alchemy of 5%”, a reference to its target of owning 5% of Ethereum’s total supply. It hasn’t abandoned its mining operations in the process; the company still runs that business alongside the treasury strategy, similar to how Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) layered its Bitcoin accumulation on top of an existing software business.
Also Read: For how Bitcoin's institutional flows compare over the same period, see our Bitcoin Price Prediction
BitMine and Joe Lubin Back Ethlabs — Ethereum’s Newest Research Lab
Apart from the ETH purchase, another significant development for Ethereum’s long-term trajectory has been the BitMine and Joe Lubin Backing Ethlab, Ethereum’s Newest Research Lab. On June 22, the same week as BitMine’s latest ETH buy, a group of five former senior Ethereum Foundation researchers launched Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit research organization.
Funding for Ethlabs comes from BitMine, SharpLink, Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, and a list of other ecosystem contributors including Anchorage Digital, Octant, and SNZ. None of the backers have disclosed the size of their individual contributions.
Lubin framed the launch as part of a broader shift in how Ethereum is governed and developed. The framing matters because Ethlabs isn’t replacing the Ethereum Foundation, it’s one of what Lubin describes as several independent organizations now sharing responsibility for the network’s development, rather than concentrating that work in a single institution.
The timing isn’t incidental. The launch comes amid a wave of high-profile departures from the Ethereum Foundation, including the recent exit of co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang. Some researchers who’ve left have been publicly critical of the Foundation’s direction, and Ethlabs gives several of them, along with the companies most financially exposed to Ethereum’s success, a new vehicle to fund the technical work they think the network needs.
Tom Lee tied BitMine’s involvement directly back to its treasury thesis. “Ethereum is positioned to grow significantly in adoption by institutions and by AI agents,” he said. “The ecosystem needs to dramatically expand its investment in talent and research to support this growth.”
Who Is Joe Lubin? Ethereum’s Co-Founder and Consensys CEO
Joe Lubin is one of Ethereum’s original co-founders, alongside Vitalik Buterin, who is generally credited as the protocol’s principal creator and author of Ethereum’s founding whitepaper. Lubin went on to found Consensys, the software company behind MetaMask and Infura, and remains one of the most influential figures in Ethereum’s ecosystem, both as a builder and, increasingly, as a founder of the independent organizations now shaping the network’s next phase.
BlackRock, Bitcoin, and Ethereum: A Tale of Two ETF Flows
While corporate treasuries like BitMine keep buying ETH directly, institutional ETF flows have told a noticeably different story this year. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have continued pulling in fresh capital, while BlackRock’s IBIT alone has repeatedly accounted for roughly two-thirds of daily inflows into the entire Bitcoin ETF category. Spot Ethereum ETFs, by contrast, have spent stretches of 2026 in outflow, including a multi-day losing streak in mid-June.
What This Means for Ethereum’s Outlook
On the other hand, ETH’s price has fallen significantly from its 2025 high near $4,946, and BitMine’s treasury has sat on substantial unrealized losses for stretches of this year as the broader market corrected. Lee has consistently described these drawdowns as “superficial” rather than structural, but that’s a chairman’s framing of his own company’s position, worth weighing against the price action itself, not taking it at face value.
What’s harder to dismiss is the depth of structural investment now flowing into Ethereum’s protocol layer. A company doesn’t fund a multi-year research lab focused on settlement speed and institutional infrastructure unless it’s planning to be around, and exposed to ETH, for a long time. BitMine’s purchase pace may be slowing as it nears its 5% target, but its commitment to funding Ethereum’s underlying technology just got a lot more concrete.
For anyone tracking ETH price action against this backdrop, the near-term technical picture and the multi-year institutional thesis are two separate questions worth tracking separately.
For a full breakdown of where ETH could trade through 2026 and beyond, see our Ethereum Price Prediction
FAQs
1. Is BitMine linked to Ethereum?
Yes, Bitmine is heavily linked to Ethereum as the world's largest public Ethereum treasury company. While it started primarily as a Bitcoin mining firm, Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE American: BMNR) has pivotally shifted its corporate strategy toward accumulating Ethereum (ETH)
2. Is BitMine buying more ETH?
Top Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies just revealed its third straight weekly buy of more than 100,000 ETH, extending its buying streak as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap shows a 15% rise in the last month.
3. How much ETH has BitMine?
Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE:BMNR) owns 5,416,901 Ethereum tokens, making them the largest corporate holder of Ethereum in the world. Their holdings represent approximately 4.49% of the total circulating Ethereum supply, with a significant majority of these tokens actively staked.
4. Why is BitMine buying more Ethereum?
Chairman Tom Lee has framed the strategy around Ethereum's role in stablecoins, tokenized assets, and decentralized finance, along with an emerging thesis that AI agents will drive future on-chain transaction demand. BitMine's stated goal is to hold 5% of Ethereum's total supply, a target it says it's about 94% toward as of its latest purchase.
5. Who is the founder of Ethereum?
Ethereum was principally created by Vitalik Buterin, who authored its founding whitepaper. Joe Lubin is widely credited as a co-founder alongside Buterin and went on to found Consensys, the company behind MetaMask and Infura. Lubin remains an influential figure in Ethereum's development and recently helped fund the new Ethlabs research organization.
6. What is Tom Lee's "crypto spring" theory?
Tom Lee, BitMine's chairman and the founder of Fundstrat, has described the current market as the early stage of a "crypto spring", a recovery phase following the sharp liquidation event in October 2025. He has argued that price weakness since then reflects temporary, "superficial" pressure rather than a breakdown in Ethereum's underlying fundamentals.
Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Digital asset markets are highly volatile, and corporate treasury strategies discussed here carry risk, including the risk of significant loss. Figures cited reflect publicly disclosed company statements and reporting available at the time of writing and may not reflect current market conditions. Always conduct your own research before making any trading or investment decisions.
