Tom Lee-chaired treasury company Bitmine has increased its Ethereum holdings to 5,983,940 ETH, worth about $16.3bn at current prices, after buying a further 27,562 ETH.
The company announced the purchase on Monday, having last updated its holdings on 14 September. Bitmine did not reveal the average price paid, but the latest acquisition would be worth approximately $75m at current prices.
Bitmine said the combined value of its cryptocurrency, cash, marketable securities and other investments had reached $17.1bn.
“We believe a crypto bull market is underway, having started in late June, driven by a multitude of factors including the rotation from AI back to crypto, strengthening crypto fundamentals centred around both tokenisation and AI and lastly, the ending of the 4-year cycle,” said Lee in a statement.
“Quarter to date, ETH is outperforming by 6,519bp, dwarfing other macro assets.”
Lee said the performance of Ethereum during the third quarter could precede further gains later in the year.
“To us, this massive outperformance of ETH in 3Q26 is viewed as a prelude to a potentially stronger up move in the 4th quarter of 2026,” he added.
“Given that institutions have underweighted crypto in 2026, partially due to the outperformance of AI stocks in early 2026, we expect institutions to substantially increase their exposure in the final 3 months of 2026. We believe this could add meaningful upside to the gains seen since June 30.”
As of 20 September, Bitmine also held 212 BTC, valued at $18.1m, along with a $105m stake in Eightco Holdings and a $180m stake in Beast Industries. Its cash and marketable securities totalled $714m.
The company’s Ethereum holdings represent more than 4.9% of the cryptocurrency’s current circulating supply, which is approximately 122.1 million ETH, according to The Block’s ether price page.
That puts Bitmine 98% of the way towards its “Alchemy of 5%” target, which it aims to achieve within 15 months of beginning its Ethereum treasury strategy.
Bitmine said 5,067,309 ETH, worth $13.8bn, was currently staked. Lee claimed the company had staked more Ethereum than any other entity in the world.
“At scale (when Bitmine’s ETH is fully staked by MAVAN and its staking partners), the projected ETH staking reward would be $421 million on an annualized basis,” he said.
“Annualized staking revenues are now projected at $357 million. And this 5.1 million ETH is 85% of the 5.98 million ETH held by Bitmine. Bitmine’s own staking operations generated a 7-day yield of 2.62% (annualized).”
Bitmine leads Ethereum treasury race
Bitmine remains the largest Ethereum treasury holder, ahead of Joe Lubin’s Sharplink and The Ether Machine, which hold approximately 888,938 ETH and 496,712 ETH respectively, according to SER data.
It is also the second-largest public cryptocurrency treasury company overall, behind Michael Saylor’s Strategy.
Strategy said on Monday that its latest weekly purchase had taken its bitcoin holdings to 846,000 BTC, worth $71.9bn and equivalent to more than 4% of bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap.
