BitMine Buys $136M More Ether, Funded by a 9.5% Preferred

BitMine Immersion Technologies bought another 76,881 ether last week, roughly $136 million worth, pushing the largest corporate ether holder's stash to 5.62 million ETH. It paid for the haul the way bitcoin treasuries have learned to: by selling stock to investors who want a yield, not a bet on price.

The company raised $274 million through a preferred equity issue carrying a 9.5% annualized dividend. Its 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock starts trading Tuesday on the NYSE under the ticker BMNP, and it pays cash dividends weekly. The structure is lifted almost directly from Strategy, the bitcoin treasury firm that pioneered using yield-bearing securities to bankroll crypto purchases.

That playbook is under strain. Investors have started asking how Strategy will keep funding its swelling dividend obligations, and BitMine chairman Tom Lee is betting his version answers the question. The difference, he argues, is staking. BitMine projects about $219 million in annualized rewards from staking its ether, recurring cash flow he says supports the Series A dividends and hands the balance sheet a cushion Strategy's bitcoin cannot.

The purchase itself was a step down from the prior week's 126,971 ETH, BitMine's biggest weekly buy of 2026. It also came after Lee signaled last month that the firm might ease off as it closed in on owning 5% of all ether. He has not eased off. "We are maintaining a somewhat elevated pace of buying as we believe this pullback in ETH prices does not reflect the strengthening of Ethereum fundamentals," Lee said.

The full pile now runs to 5.62 million ETH, 204 bitcoin, $502 million in cash and securities, plus stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings, for $10.4 billion in total holdings. The next test is narrower than any of that: whether $219 million in staking yield can actually cover a weekly dividend check, starting Tuesday.