Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), the ether (ETH) treasury firm helmed by Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee, bought 101,901 ETH through last week, pushing its total holdings above 5 million tokens of the second-largest cryptocurrency.
The purchase lifted the firm’s ETH treasury to 5,078,386 tokens, or about 4.21% of ether’s circulating supply, according to a Monday update. Bitmine reached that milestone in roughly 10 months, since it pivoted to a digital asset treasury strategy company from a bitcoin miner in June.
“Bitmine ETH holdings crossed 5 million this past week,” Lee said. “This is a major milestone as the company moves towards acquiring 5% of the ETH supply.”
The latest purchase, worth roughly $236 million at current ETH prices, extends a streak of larger weekly purchases as Bitmine adds to its position while most digital asset treasuries remain on the sidelines.
The firm’s total crypto and cash holdings stand at $13.3 billion. Alongside its ETH position, the firm holds 200 bitcoin BTC$77,355.19, $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 yield on its ETH stash. About 3.7 million tokens — roughly 73% of its holdings — are now staked, generating around $264 million in annualized revenue. The firm debuted its Mavan staking platform in March to attract institutional clients alongside supporting its own treasury operations.
BMNR shares were unchanged in pre-market trading following the update.
Ether as ‘wartime store of value’
Lee framed ether’s role as shifting beyond a speculative asset. Citing recent research by Etherealize, he said ETH is increasingly being treated as a “store of value” and collateral 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 relying on public blockchains as a long-term tailwind for the asset.
“There is a lot of meaning to ETH being the best ‘war-time store of value’ and to ETH being the asset leading since the war started,” said Lee.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/04/27/bitmine-buys-usd236-million-in-ether-as-tom-lee-touts-eth-as-wartime-store-of-value
