Bitmine Immersion Technologies added 9,587 ETH last week, bringing its total holdings to 6,070,092 tokens. This purchase was worth roughly $20 million at the reference price of $2,234 per coin. The company now holds 4.97% of Ethereum’s 122.2 million token supply, which is 99% of the way to its "Alchemy of 5%" goal. Chairman Tom Lee called Vitalik Buterin’s recent declaration that "ETH is a store of value, ETH is money" a seismic shift. Lee argued this clarifies how ETH will capture value in a coming supercycle of tokenization and AI. He described ETH as pristine and trusted collateral rather than a cash-flow token.
The Accumulation Strategy
The firm has bought Ethereum every week since launching its treasury strategy on June 30, 2025. As of November 8, total holdings stood at $14.3 billion, including 216 Bitcoin, $475 million in cash and marketable securities, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, and a $75 million position in Eightco Holdings. Bitmine remains the world’s largest Ethereum treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury overall, trailing only Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which holds about 849,327 BTC. The company staked 5,227,037 ETH through its MAVAN platform, representing more than 86% of its total haul. Staking all of its ETH would earn about $359 million a year at a trailing seven-day yield of 2.65%, compared with about $309 million on what is staked now. Lee framed the 5% mark as a stopping point, stating he won’t hold more than 5% of ETH supply. By Unchained’s math, 5% of the ETH supply comes to 6.11 million ETH, leaving Bitmine roughly 39,900 ETH short of the goal. At last week’s pace, the remaining amount would take a little over four weeks to buy.
Market Context and Valuation
Lee leaned heavily on comments Buterin made at the Devcon conference in Mumbai, where the Ethereum founder said, "I’ve finally made up my mind, ETH is a store of value, ETH is money." Lee contended ETH functions as pristine and trusted collateral, reflecting its position as the layer-1 network favored by financial institutions moving assets onchain. Buterin elaborated in an X post, laying out why he now sees ETH primarily as a store of value, including his view that fee-burning is weaker than it once seemed and that optimizing for it can conflict with decentralization. Lee framed that reasoning as consistent with Ethereum’s roadmap and its role in the tokenization wave. The firm also recently argued the muted market reaction to the record Binance hack showed crypto’s growing resilience. Counting cash, other tokens and moonshot investments, Bitmine’s total holdings stood at $14.3 billion as of Nov. 8. The company reported its total crypto, cash, marketable securities, and other investments stood at $14.3 billion after its latest weekly acquisitions. While Bitmine did not disclose an average purchase price, its latest acquisition is worth around $20.3 million at current prices. The NYSE-listed company said Monday its holdings reached 6,070,092 ETH, worth roughly $13.6 billion at a reference price of $2,234 per coin. That’s 4.97% of Ethereum’s 122.2 million token supply, leaving Bitmine, by its own count, 99% of the way to its goal of owning 5% of the network, a target it calls the Alchemy of 5%, reached in just 15 months.
