Bitmine Immersion Technologies bought a further 32,447 ETH last week, taking its total ether holdings to 5,847,611 as the cryptocurrency rose 30% in its strongest weekly performance since May 2025.
The latest purchase extends Bitmine’s uninterrupted weekly buying run, which began when the company launched its ethereum treasury strategy on 30 June 2025.
Based on an ether price of $2,440, Bitmine’s holdings were worth about $14.3bn on 23 August. The company now owns approximately 4.8% of ethereum’s estimated supply of 120.7 million tokens, leaving it close to its stated ambition of controlling 5% of the total.
Bitmine’s wider portfolio includes 210 bitcoin, $308m in cash and marketable securities, as well as stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings.
Ether’s 30% weekly increase was its biggest since May 2025 and, before that, July 2021. Bitmine chairman Tom Lee highlighted those two periods as possible historical comparisons. Ether went on to rise by 170% after the May 2025 gain and by 167% following the July 2021 increase.
“In those two precedent instances, this weekly gain of >30% signaled a launch point for a larger move in ETH,” Lee said.
However, previous market performance does not guarantee that ether will follow the same pattern this time.
Lee identified several factors that could support the cryptocurrency, including improving financial conditions, increasing interest from Wall Street in tokenisation and the growing use of blockchain technology by artificial intelligence agents.
“We expect easing financial conditions to be a tailwind for crypto,” he said.
He also forecast that ethereum could outperform bitcoin in the next crypto cycle. Lee argued that previous rallies in the ETH/BTC exchange rate had been driven by new applications, including initial coin offerings, non-fungible tokens and stablecoins.
Alongside its purchases, Bitmine is allocating an increasing proportion of its ether holdings to staking, a process that allows tokens to be used to help secure the network in return for rewards.
The company said 5,067,309 ETH, worth about $12.4bn at current prices, had been staked by 23 August. That represents roughly 87% of Bitmine’s total ether holdings.
On the basis of its current activity, Bitmine projects annualised staking revenue of about $330m. It said its own staking operations had recently produced a seven-day annualised yield of 2.67%.
When assets deployed through its Made in America Validator Network and external staking partners are included, Bitmine estimates that its annual staking rewards could eventually reach about $381m.
The combination of continued buying, income from staking and ether’s strong price recovery is increasing Bitmine’s exposure to the cryptocurrency in several ways. Its strategy is no longer simply a bet on the future value of ETH; it is also an attempt to generate recurring income from one of the largest corporate ether holdings.
Separately, Fidelity has filed to add staking to its ethereum ETF, potentially putting nearly all of FETH’s ether to work earning…
