Bitmine holds 6.04 million ETH, 4.9% of supply, and is about 65,000 ETH short of its 5% goal

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), the company chaired by Thomas “Tom” Lee, said its ethereum holdings reached 6,041,481 ETH in a press release on Monday 19 October. The count is as of 3:00pm ET on Sunday 18 October, after a purchase of 12,535 ETH over the past week. Valued at $2,365 per ether, the Coinbase price the company used, the pile is worth about $14.3 billion. Bitmine says that is 4.9% of the 122.1 million ETH in existence, against a stated goal of 5%.

The remaining gap is small: roughly 64,000 to 66,000 ETH, depending on which supply figure is used. At the pace of the last three weeks, that is five to six more weekly updates. By its own count, Decrypt noted, the company is 99% of the way there.

What has changed is the size of the weekly buy. Twelve and a half thousand ETH is about $30 million, according to Decrypt, a small sum for a company that reports $15.1 billion of crypto, cash, securities and venture stakes. Ether is also trading below the prices at which Bitmine bought much of its stack, and 84% of the coins are locked in staking.

Bitmine ethereum holdings: what the 18 October update says

The release lists the treasury line by line. Ether dominates it. Everything else, from bitcoin to cash, adds up to well under a billion dollars.

Bitmine labels the Beast Industries and Eightco positions as “moonshots”. It describes Eightco as a way to get indirect exposure to OpenAI. The release ranks Bitmine as the largest ether treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury in the world, behind Strategy and its 848,250 BTC (about $74 billion).

The weekly series is steady. Bitmine reported 6,016,414 ETH as of 4 October and 6,028,946 ETH a week later, according to crypto.news. That is 12,532 ETH added in the week to 11 October and 12,535 ETH in the week to 18 October. The company says it has bought ether every single week since its ETH treasury strategy began on 30 June 2025.

How close is 5%: 4.9% of supply and about 65,000 ETH to go

Bitmine divides by a rounded supply of 122.1 million ETH. We checked against an independent count: ultrasound.money showed 122,143,367 ETH in circulation when we read it at about 16:40 UTC on 19 October. Ether supply is not fixed. It moves by a few thousand ETH a day as new coins are issued to validators and fees are burned, so the figure is a snapshot.

On that count, 6,041,481 divided by 122,143,367 gives 4.946% of all ETH. Bitmine rounds it to 4.9%, crypto.news to about 4.95%. Five percent of the same supply is 6,107,168 ETH, which leaves 65,687 ETH to buy, a little over 1% of what Bitmine already holds.

Using Bitmine’s own 122.1 million figure instead, the 5% line sits at 6,105,000 ETH and the gap is 63,519 ETH, the number crypto.news printed. Either way, the distance is now about five weeks of buying at the current rate.

Five purchases of 12,535 ETH would bring the total to 6,104,156 ETH as of Sunday 22 November, a few hundred to a few thousand coins short of either target. A sixth would cross it, which points to the week ending 29 November and a release on Monday 30 November. That is our arithmetic, not a Bitmine forecast, and it assumes the pace and the supply both hold. Criptovaluta.it, an Italian outlet, put the date at year-end on its own estimate.

The company calls this target the “Alchemy of 5%”. Lee has said the company will stop buying once it gets there, Decrypt reported, describing Bitmine as close to the end of its accumulation. The company has not announced when its weekly purchases will end, crypto.news pointed out. Five percent of supply is a symbolic line, not a control threshold: ETH holders do not vote on protocol changes with their coins.

84% of the pile is staked, for a projected $309 million a year

Of that total, 5,067,309 ETH are staked, about 84% of the holdings and roughly $12 billion at the release price. The coins run through MAVAN, short for Made in America VAlidator Network, the staking platform Bitmine launched earlier in 2026, and through outside staking partners. Built first for Bitmine’s own treasury, MAVAN now also serves institutional investors, custodians and ecosystem partners, the company says.

At a seven-day yield of 2.58%, the release projects $309 million a year in staking revenue, and $369 million if every coin were staked. The numbers add up: 5,067,309 ETH times 2.58% times $2,365 gives about $309 million. That income is paid in new ETH, so its dollar value moves with the price.

Staking means locking ether to run validators that propose and check blocks, in exchange for rewards. Locked coins cannot be sold on the spot. Leaving takes a trip through an exit queue, and joining takes one too: our report on the Ethereum staking entry queue shows 1.2 million ETH waiting about 21 days to get in. For newcomers, our glossary entry on staking covers the basics, including slashing, the penalty a validator pays for breaking the rules.

Under water: ETH near $2,400 and Lee’s risk-off reading

Ether traded near $2,398 at 16:22 UTC on 19 October, up 1.35% over 24 hours and down 5.14% over seven days, according to our market data. At that price, Bitmine’s 6,041,481 ETH were worth about $14.49 billion. Bitcoin stood near $81,920 at the same time.

The weekly release gives no average purchase price, so we give none. Decrypt reports that the company is under water on paper because it bought much of its ether last year at higher prices.

Shares of Bitmine closed Friday 16 October at $21.66, down 7.28% on the day, The Block reported. A treasury company’s shares can trade above or below the value of what it holds. Analysts track that gap with mNAV, the company’s market value divided by the value of its crypto. Below 1, the market prices the company at less than its coins.

Lee gives his reading of the slide in the release. Investors’ risk appetite shrank in recent weeks, he says, on worries over AI funding and AI model safety, escalating US-Iran war activity, nerves before the US midterm elections and rising bond yields. A drop in AI stocks, semiconductor and memory makers included, hit Korea and Taiwan, two markets dominated by those sectors.

“Crypto is widely held in the US, Korea and Taiwan,” Lee said, quoted by The Block. “So naturally, when investors in those regions de-risk, this creates spillover pressures in crypto markets.”

He adds that price drops while fundamentals stay strong have historically offered attractive risk/reward, and that Bitmine, which kept buying through what he calls a crypto winter, is positioned to outperform when the bull market he expects arrives. His chairman’s message of 7 October was titled “Crypto Bull Underway”. These are the views of the company’s chairman about his own stock, not a Coindaro forecast.

What happens when Bitmine stops buying?

At today’s pace, the end of the program would remove about $30 million of weekly demand. That is small next to the swings in US spot ether funds, which lost more than bitcoin funds last week. The change is more one of habit: Bitmine says it has bought ether every week since 30 June 2025, and that steady bid would go.

Other treasury companies are under pressure. Strategy’s STRC preferred stock fell to $97.72, below its buyback band, as we reported on the STRC selloff on 18 October. SkyAI sold all its SOL and launched a $3.00-a-share cash tender offer worth about $201 million, according to a company 8-K filed on 19 October. Bitmine is still adding coins, in smaller amounts.

Past the 5% line, Bitmine would be left holding about 6.1 million ETH that pay it staking income, with a share price that does not have to follow the value of those coins. The 18 October release says nothing on what comes next: a new target, what to do with the staking rewards, or share buybacks.

Concentration is the other point to watch. A single company holding nearly one ether in twenty, most of it staked through its own validator network and a few partners, makes Bitmine’s decisions on custody, validators and any future sales matter to the wider market.

SharpLink says it has put $400 million to work in ether.fi and Lido

SharpLink, another listed ether treasury, made news the same day for what it does with its coins rather than how many it buys. It says it has deployed $400 million across ether.fi and Lido, two proof of stake coin with a protocol that stakes it for you and issues a transferable token (such as Lido stETH or rETH) representing the deposit plus rewards, which you can use or sell while the coins stay staked.">liquid staking protocols, The Defiant reported. The outlet ties this to SharpLink’s August plan to stake $200 million through Lido, with the resulting wstETH held by the custodian Anchorage.

We could not confirm the details from a second source or from a SharpLink statement, so this is the company’s claim as reported. The split between the two protocols, the dates of the deployments and the amount of ether involved were not available to us.

Next dates for Bitmine and ether

Bitmine’s next weekly update is due on Monday 26 October, with holdings as of Sunday 25 October. Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade is set to go live on the Hoodi test network the same day. On our arithmetic, the 5% line would be crossed in the week ending 29 November, with a release on 30 November, if Bitmine keeps buying about 12,500 ETH a week.