Bitmine Immersion Technologies added 9,587 ETH, worth roughly $20 million, extending the weekly buying streak it began with its Ethereum treasury strategy on June 30, 2025. The purchase brings its reported holdings close to its goal of owning 5% of Ethereum’s supply.
The valuation argument accompanying the purchase is distinct from the accumulation itself: chairman Tom Lee framed ETH primarily as trusted collateral and a store of value, rather than as a token valued on cash flows.
Historical reporting context: the original article was published on November 10, 2026, at 01:08:21 UTC+8. The company announcement was made Monday, and its total-holdings snapshot was dated November 8.
Holdings approach the 5% target
The NYSE-listed company reported holding 6,070,092 ETH, worth approximately $13.6 billion at a reference price of $2,234 per ETH. Against the cited Ethereum supply of 122.2 million tokens, that represents 4.97%.
By Bitmine’s calculation, it was 99% of the way to its ownership target, which it calls the “Alchemy of 5%,” after just 15 months. The company said it had purchased ETH every week since launching the strategy.
Including cash, other tokens and investments it describes as “moonshots,” Bitmine reported total holdings of $14.3 billion as of November 8. Alongside its ETH, those holdings included:
- 216 BTC;
- $475 million in cash and marketable securities;
- A $180 million stake in Beast Industries;
- A $75 million position in Eightco Holdings, which Bitmine describes as a rare publicly traded proxy for indirect exposure to OpenAI.
The report described Bitmine as the world’s largest Ethereum treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury overall, behind Michael Saylor’s Strategy. According to the company release cited in the article, Strategy held approximately 849,327 BTC.
Lee’s thesis: collateral rather than cash flow
Lee pointed to comments by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin at the Devcon conference in Mumbai as support for Bitmine’s strategy. Buterin said: “I’ve finally made up my mind, ETH is a store of value, ETH is money.”
Lee called that statement “a seismic shift,” arguing that it clarified ETH’s potential value capture during what he described as a coming “supercycle of tokenization and AI.” He characterized ETH as “pristine and trusted collateral,” rather than a cash-flow token, and linked that view to his assessment of Ethereum as the layer-1 network favored by financial institutions bringing assets onchain.
In a subsequent X post, Buterin explained why he now views ETH primarily as a store of value. His reasoning included the view that fee-burning is a weaker value driver than it once appeared and that optimizing for it can conflict with decentralization. Lee presented that reasoning as consistent with Ethereum’s roadmap and its role in tokenization.
These are attributed arguments about ETH’s monetary and collateral role—not a demonstrated fair-value estimate. The ownership percentage measures Bitmine’s accumulation, while the reference price values its holdings; neither establishes what ETH should be worth.
Staking revenue is a separate measure
Bitmine reported 5,227,037 ETH staked through its MAVAN platform, approximately 86% of its ETH holdings, with projected annualized staking revenue of about $359 million.
That projection is distinct from both Ethereum’s fee-burning mechanism and Lee’s store-of-value thesis. It is a company-reported revenue projection, not reported realized earnings or a valuation target.
The article also noted that Bitmine had recently interpreted the muted market reaction to what it described as the record Binance hack as evidence of growing crypto-market resilience.
Disclosure carried by Decrypt: Tom Lee is one of several investors in Dastan, Decrypt’s parent company.