BitMine Crosses 6 Million ETH — Tom Lees Treasury Is 98 Percent of the Way to Owning 5 Percent of Ethereum

BitMine Immersion Technologies has crossed the six-million-Ethereum mark. The Tom Lee-chaired treasury company disclosed on Sept. 28 that it held 6,001,302 ETH as of Sept. 27 at 3:00 p.m. ET, the product of another 17,362 ETH purchased over the past week and the sixty-ninth consecutive week of buying since the strategy launched on June 30, 2025. The milestone puts BitMine at roughly 4.9 percent of an estimated 122.1 million ETH circulating supply, which the company says makes it 98 percent of the way to its self-styled “Alchemy of 5 percent” target, a treasury equal to 5 percent of Ethereum’s supply. Using the company’s Coinbase reference price of 2,698 USD per ETH, the position was worth approximately 16.2 billion USD. Total crypto, cash, marketable securities and other investments stood at 17.2 billion USD. “Over the past week, we acquired 17,362 ETH,” Lee said in the release, describing the six-million crossing as a milestone reached in under 15 months. Notably, the pace of buying is slowing: the prior week’s SEC-filed update showed a 27,562 ETH purchase from a base of 5,983,940, and the final week of August saw a much larger 53,501 ETH addition. Whether the deceleration reflects price discipline, available float, or proximity to the finish line, the company did not say. ## The last 103,698 ETH The arithmetic of the endgame is tight. At a 5 percent share of the 122.1 million ETH supply BitMine uses as its denominator, the target equals approximately 6.105 million ETH, leaving the company roughly 103,698 ETH short. At recent prices near 2,668 USD per CoinGecko, that remaining tranche would cost somewhere north of 275 million USD, a sum BitMine routinely cleared in single weekly purchases during 2026, though not in the last two. The trajectory through September has been a steady grind: 5,929,198 ETH on Sept. 7, then 5,956,378 on Sept. 13, 5,983,940 on Sept. 20, and now 6,001,302. If the weekly cadence holds, the 5 percent threshold falls within the next four to six weeks, assuming the supply figure does not drift. ## The staking machine underneath What separates BitMine from a passive holder is the validator infrastructure it has built under the treasury. The company reported 5,067,309 staked ETH as of Sept. 27, roughly 84 percent of total holdings and unchanged from the prior week’s disclosure. At the 2,698 USD reference price, that staked position is worth about 13.7 billion USD. Staking economics are the company’s revenue engine. BitMine said its staking operations generated a seven-day annualized yield of 2.62 percent, with current annualized staking revenue projected at roughly 358 million USD. Lee projects approximately 424 million USD in annualized rewards if the treasury were fully staked through MAVAN, the Made in America Validator Network the company launched earlier in 2026, and its staking partners. Both figures are management projections and the company’s own forward-looking warnings note that validator performance, protocol changes and network conditions can move returns materially. MAVAN has also begun serving outside institutional investors, custodians and ecosystem partners, which positions BitMine less as a leveraged ETH bet and more as an infrastructure operator whose balance sheet happens to be denominated in Ethereum. ## Beyond the ETH stack The rest of the portfolio is rounding error by comparison but telling about strategy. As of Sept. 27, BitMine held 213 BTC, 672 million USD in cash and marketable securities, a 180 million USD stake in Beast Industries and 115 million USD in Eightco Holdings. A week earlier the figures were 714 million USD in cash and securities, 212 BTC and a 105 million USD Eightco position, so the week’s changes net out to modest rotations rather than any strategic shift. Management also made a performance claim that will raise eyebrows: ETH has outperformed the S&P 500 by 6,728 basis points during the third quarter through the release date. Lee framed that as evidence institutions remain underexposed to crypto, a market view rather than a guaranteed outcome, as the company itself is careful to note. For Ethereum’s broader market, the significance of the crossing is structural. A single entity controlling nearly 5 percent of supply, with 84 percent of it staked and effectively locked out of circulation, is a persistent squeeze on tradable float. Bulls read that as persistent structural demand with a published, dated schedule; skeptics note that a treasury this size makes ETH’s price increasingly a reflection of one company’s discipline. Both now watch the same thing: whether week seventy brings another purchase, and how big it is. Ethereum trades near 2,668 USD at the time of writing, down about 1.3 percent on the day, with Bitcoin at 83,073 USD and Solana at 118 USD, per CoinGecko.

The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.