Bitmine is quietly doing something no corporate treasury has attempted at this scale with Ethereum. The company’s latest Bitmine Ethereum purchase — 52,203 ETH worth roughly $90 million — brings its total holdings to 4.7% of Ethereum’s entire circulating supply, pushing it to within striking distance of a target that once seemed almost absurdly ambitious.
Summary
Key takeaways
- Bitmine bought 52,203 ETH for approximately $90 million, lifting total holdings to 4.7% of Ethereum’s circulating supply.
- The company is 94% of the way to its stated goal of owning 5% of all ETH, with a total crypto-related balance sheet of approximately $10.7 billion.
- Bitmine raised $273.8 million through a 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock offering to fund ongoing ETH accumulation.
- Staking revenue has grown to $223 million annualized, with potential to reach $268 million once all holdings are fully staked via MAVAN and partners.
- Only Strategy, led by Michael Saylor, currently holds a larger corporate cryptocurrency treasury.
Closing In on 5% of Ethereum’s Supply
Less than a year into its Ethereum treasury strategy, Bitmine has already crossed a threshold that most institutional investors would consider extreme concentration: controlling nearly one in every twenty ether tokens in existence. The latest acquisition leaves the firm at 94% of its self-imposed target, according to the company’s June 22 update.
Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee has been explicit about the goal. “We continue to maintain a steady pace of accumulation throughout 2026,” he said. The pace has actually slowed from prior weeks — the $90 million purchase was smaller than the two preceding acquisitions — but the trajectory remains intact.
What makes Bitmine’s position unusual isn’t just the size of the bet. It’s the structural logic behind it. The company isn’t simply hoarding ETH and waiting for price appreciation. It has built a staking operation generating real cash yields, which in turn funds dividend obligations on preferred shares, which in turn raises fresh capital to buy more ETH. The entire machine is designed to compound.
How Bitmine Finances the Accumulation
Bitmine raised approximately $273.8 million in net proceeds by selling 3.5 million shares of its 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock at $80 per share on June 10. The preferred shares, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BMNP, pay weekly cash dividends.
The most recent declared dividend came in at $0.1056 per share, payable July 10 to shareholders of record as of June 30. Lee has been clear that staking income — not speculative price gains — is the intended engine for covering those payments.
That framing matters. It positions Bitmine less like a crypto speculator and more like a yield-generating infrastructure operator that happens to hold a historic concentration of a single digital asset. Whether that distinction holds up under sustained ETH price pressure is a different question entirely.
Staking Revenue: The Numbers Behind the Strategy
The staking side of the business has grown substantially. Bitmine currently has 4,718,677 ETH staked — representing more than 83% of its total holdings — with a combined value exceeding $8.2 billion, processed through its MAVAN staking platform and associated partners.
At current yields, the company reports annualized staking revenue of approximately $223 million. Lee projects that figure could climb to around $268 million per year once all of Bitmine’s ETH is fully staked, based on a 2.73% seven-day BMNR yield. That would represent a meaningful increase from the roughly $219 million Lee cited when the preferred stock offering was first announced.
For context, those staking revenues are being generated against a backdrop of unrealized losses on ETH holdings — the asset has been struggling at key price levels. That tension sits at the heart of Bitmine’s model: the staking income is real and growing, but the mark-to-market on the underlying position is unflattering. The bet is that the yield stream is sufficient to sustain operations and dividends even if ETH remains under pressure, while the long-term thesis plays out.
Tom Lee’s Broader Case for Ethereum
Lee has not wavered publicly, despite a market that hasn’t cooperated. He reiterated his view that the crypto market remains in the early stages of what he calls a “crypto spring” — a recovery from the downturn that began with an October 2025 liquidation shock. Bitcoin fell below $60,000 briefly in early June, and ETH has faced repeated rejections at resistance levels, but Lee maintains the long-term setup is intact.
His core thesis on Ethereum specifically centers on two secular trends: tokenization of real-world assets and expanding demand from artificial intelligence applications. Both, he argues, will increase the need for programmable blockchain infrastructure — and Ethereum remains the dominant platform for both. Whether that demand materializes fast enough to justify Bitmine’s concentration at current prices is precisely the question investors are watching.
Where Bitmine Stands Among Corporate Crypto Holders
Bitmine’s total crypto-related balance sheet now stands at approximately $10.7 billion, encompassing ETH, 205 Bitcoin, cash and marketable securities of $601 million, a $200 million stake in Beast Industries, and a $104 million stake in Eightco Holdings.
That places it second only to Michael Saylor’s Strategy in terms of overall corporate cryptocurrency holdings. Strategy did disclose another Bitcoin purchase this week — adding 520 BTC to its reserves — but that acquisition was considerably smaller in dollar terms than Bitmine’s latest ETH buy, underscoring just how aggressively Bitmine is moving relative to even its closest comparable.
The comparison to Strategy is instructive, though imperfect. Saylor built his treasury around a single, simpler thesis: Bitcoin as a store of value. Bitmine is doing something structurally more complex — accumulating a yield-generating asset, staking it at scale, and using that yield to support a preferred equity instrument. It’s a more elaborate construct, which means more moving parts and more ways for the model to be stress-tested.
With the final 0.3% of ETH supply needed to hit the 5% target still to be acquired, the question isn’t really whether Bitmine gets there — the pace and the financing suggest it will. The more interesting question is what happens once it does: whether a single entity holding one-twentieth of Ethereum’s supply changes the dynamics of the network itself, and how regulators, validators, and the broader Ethereum ecosystem will respond to that concentration over time.
FAQ
How much Ethereum did Bitmine recently purchase and what is its total ETH holding?
Bitmine purchased 52,203 ETH worth approximately $90 million, bringing its total holdings to 4.7% of Ethereum’s circulating supply, or roughly 5.67 million ETH valued at close to $10 billion.
What is Bitmine’s target for Ethereum holdings?
Bitmine aims to hold 5% of Ethereum’s total supply. As of its latest update, the company is approximately 94% of the way toward that goal.
How does Bitmine finance its Ethereum purchases?
Bitmine raised approximately $273.8 million by issuing 3.5 million shares of its 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock (BMNP) at $80 per share, with proceeds directed toward additional ETH acquisitions.
What revenue does Bitmine generate from staking its Ethereum holdings?
Bitmine currently earns approximately $223 million annualized from staking over 4.7 million ETH through its MAVAN platform and partners. Chairman Tom Lee projects that figure could rise to around $268 million per year once all holdings are fully staked.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
