Bitmine Immersion Technologies bought 53,501 ETH last week, extending its Ethereum buying streak to 65 consecutive weeks and lifting its holdings to about 5.9 million coins, roughly 4.9% of the total supply. The company is now within 0.1 percentage point of its stated goal of owning 5% of all Ether in circulation.
The purchase, disclosed in the company’s weekly update, was its largest weekly buy since June. At an Ether price of $2,511, the position is worth about $14.8 billion. Bitmine remains the largest corporate holder of Ethereum by total holdings.
The numbers behind the streak
Bitmine’s accumulation began on June 30, 2025 and has continued through every week since, including the downturn that started in the fourth quarter of last year and sent Ether and the broader crypto market sharply lower. That persistence has a cost: the company is sitting on roughly $5.1 billion in unrealized losses on its Ether holdings, according to DropsTab data cited by Cointelegraph.
Of the 5,901,112 ETH held as of August 30, the company has staked 5,067,309 coins, about 86% of the treasury, worth approximately $12.7 billion. Based on a seven-day annualized staking yield of 2.63%, Bitmine projects annualized staking revenue of about $335 million. Part of the staking runs through MAVAN, the institutional staking platform the company launched earlier in 2026, and management estimates rewards could reach $390 million annually once more ETH is fully deployed.
| Bitmine treasury snapshot | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total ETH holdings | 5,901,112 ETH |
| Share of circulating supply | 4.9% of 120.7 million ETH |
| Value at $2,511 per ETH | About $14.8 billion |
| ETH staked | 5,067,309 ETH, about 86% |
| Projected annual staking revenue | About $335 million |
| Unrealized losses | About $5.1 billion |
| Cash and securities | $541 million |
The wider balance sheet also includes 211 Bitcoin, an $180 million stake in Beast Industries, an $81 million stake in Eightco Holdings, and $541 million in cash and marketable securities. The company put total treasury value at $15.6 billion as of August 30. Michael Saylor’s Strategy still ranks ahead globally by total digital asset treasury value because of its much larger Bitcoin position.
Trading activity in the stock has stayed heavy. Average daily dollar trading volume in BMNR reached about $1.36 billion over five sessions through August 29, and shares were trading above $24 on August 31, up 1.3% on the day and on track to end August with a gain of nearly 40%, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Lee’s case for institutions
Chairman Tom Lee, the former Fundstrat strategist who fronts the company, argues the streak has positioned Bitmine for a wave of institutional buying. Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana have been the three best-performing major assets since June 30, he said, with ETH leading the gains and outperforming the S&P 500 by 5,430 basis points through August 28.
“We believe this sets the stage for institutions to add to their crypto holdings given the substantial outperformance of crypto versus other macro assets in Q3 so far,” Lee said in a statement.
The pitch is straightforward: if Ether keeps outperforming, treasuries that bought through the downturn look prescient, and the staking yield gives the position a carry that passive Bitcoin treasuries lack. A Bitcoin treasury sits idle waiting for price appreciation. An Ethereum treasury with 86% of its stack staked generates cash flow while it waits, which changes the economics of holding through a drawdown.
It is also a pitch aimed at a specific moment. Institutions that sat out the earlier cycle have been watching from the sidelines, and a quarter in which ETH beats the S&P 500 by more than 54 percentage points gives sales teams at treasury companies an easy slide for their decks. Whether that converts into actual allocations is the open question, and Lee has been making the same argument in various forms since the treasury strategy launched 15 months ago.
The risks nobody at Bitmine mentions in the press release
The strategy concentrates risk in a single asset that the company cannot sell without moving the market against itself. At 4.9% of circulating supply, Bitmine’s holdings are large enough that any reversal would be public and painful. The $5.1 billion in unrealized losses is a reminder that the streak has so far been a bet on recovery, not a record of one.
Staking revenue also depends on network conditions. The 2.63% yield is a seven-day annualized figure, not a guarantee, and it moves with the total amount of ETH staked across the network. If more ETH enters staking, the yield compresses. A sustained rally that tempts other treasuries to stake would erode exactly the advantage Bitmine advertises.
There is also the question of what happens at 5%. The company has said reaching the target is a milestone rather than a stopping point, but buying a meaningful share of a major asset’s supply invites regulatory attention, particularly in the United States where the SEC has shown renewed interest in how digital asset treasuries account for their holdings. Concentration at that scale also raises governance questions for the Ethereum network itself, whose developers have historically been uneasy about any single entity approaching levels of influence that could complicate the staking ecosystem’s decentralization arguments.
Liquidity cuts both ways in a drawdown. The same $1.36 billion of daily volume that makes BMNR easy to trade in a rally makes it easy to abandon in a panic, and treasury stocks have historically traded at discounts to the value of their underlying holdings when sentiment turns. Bitmine’s premium to net asset value is a market verdict on Lee’s strategy, and premiums can become discounts faster than treasuries can unwind positions.
For now, the arithmetic favors the bulls: Ether has recovered, the streak continues, and the 5% mark is one decent weekly buy away. The company has bought ETH in every week for 65 weeks. Whether week 66 looks like the previous 65 or like the start of a capitulation is the question the next downturn will answer.