Bitmine Now Holds 4.8% of Ethereum, Eyeing 5% This Year

Bitmine Immersion Technologies added 42,197 ETH last week, and it now controls 4.8% of every ether in circulation. That lifts the company's treasury to 5,742,237 ETH against a supply of 120.7 million. Chairman Tom Lee wants 5%, what he calls the alchemy of 5%, and he says Bitmine will get there this year. The buying pace sped up from the week before.

The eleven-billion-dollar book

Bitmine pegs its total crypto, cash, securities, and moonshots at $11.1 billion as of July 5, and the ether, marked at $1,800 a coin, is nearly all of it. The rest is a mix: 206 Bitcoin, roughly half a billion in cash and marketable securities, and equity stakes in Beast Industries ($180 million) and Nasdaq-listed Eightco Holdings ($71 million). That leaves Bitmine as the largest Ethereum treasury anywhere and the second-largest crypto treasury of any kind. Only Strategy Inc., sitting on 847,363 BTC worth about $54 billion, ranks higher.

Nearly 85% of the ether is working. Bitmine reported 4,879,157 staked ETH on July 5, about $8.8 billion at its own mark, some of it routed through MAVAN, the institutional staking platform it built this year to run its treasury and, eventually, to serve custodians and partners. Lee says no entity has staked more. Annualized staking revenue runs near $235 million now, and Bitmine projects $277 million at full scale on a 2.68% seven-day yield.

Now a Wall Street stock

The treasury has become a trade. Bitmine joined the Russell 1000 on June 26, an addition Lee figures could bring hundreds or thousands of institutional shareholders, since passive funds and ETFs typically hold 18% to 20% of an index member's stock. Days earlier it closed a $273.8 million raise of 3.5 million shares of 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred at $80 apiece, now trading on the NYSE as BMNP with weekly dividends. Fundstrat clocked BMNR's average daily dollar volume at $543 million over four days through July 2, good for 233rd among 5,704 U.S.-listed names.

The Washington angle

Lee tied the accumulation to policy, not just price. He pointed to prediction markets putting the Clarity Act's odds of passage near 50%, the highest in two weeks, and to Ethereum layer-2 networks already clearing USDC payments for Shopify and Visa. ETH changed hands around $1,791 as the update went out. The 5% line is 0.2 points away.

The market read

ETH sits at $1,738.32, down 2.5% on the day but up 10.9% over the week, a green seven-day run that a softer session has started to chip at. The 30-day gain is a thinner 2.6%, so most of the recent strength is fresh rather than a longer climb.

Turnover of $10.93 billion against a $209.78 billion market cap reads as an ordinary day, not a blow-off. If the weekly momentum holds, the daily dip looks like a pause; if the 24-hour slide widens, the month's slim gains are the first thing at risk. Neither is guaranteed.