Originally published by Decrypt on November 10, 2026, at 01:08:21 UTC+8.
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 NYSE-listed company said Monday that it held 6,070,092 ETH, valued at roughly $13.6 billion using a reference price of $2,234 per coin. Against the reported supply of 122.2 million ETH, that represents 4.97%.
By Bitmine’s own calculation, it was 99% of the way toward its target of owning 5% of Ethereum’s supply, which it calls the “Alchemy of 5%,” after just 15 months. These figures measure corporate treasury accumulation—not growth in Ethereum users, transactions or retention.
Lee links the strategy to Buterin’s store-of-value view
Chairman Tom Lee pointed to remarks by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin at Devcon in Mumbai as support for Bitmine’s approach. Buterin said: “I’ve finally made up my mind, ETH is a store of value, ETH is money.”
Lee described the statement as “a seismic shift” and argued that ETH would capture value in what he called a coming “supercycle of tokenization and AI.” He characterized ETH as “pristine and trusted collateral” rather than a cash-flow token, linking that view to Ethereum’s role as a layer-1 network favored by financial institutions moving assets onchain. Those are Lee’s assessments, not demonstrated outcomes of Bitmine’s purchases.
In a subsequent X post, Buterin explained why he now viewed ETH primarily as a store of value. His reasoning included the view that fee-burning was weaker than it had once appeared and that optimizing for it could conflict with decentralization. Lee presented that reasoning as consistent with Ethereum’s roadmap and its potential role in tokenization.
Disclosure: Decrypt reported that Lee is one of several investors in Dastan, its parent company.
Staking and the wider treasury
Bitmine reported total holdings of $14.3 billion as of November 8, counting ETH, cash, other tokens and investments it labels “moonshots.” Alongside its Ethereum position, those holdings included:
- 216 Bitcoin;
- $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 public proxy for indirect OpenAI exposure.
The company had 5,227,037 ETH, roughly 86% of its ETH holdings, staked through its MAVAN platform. It projected annualized staking revenue of about $359 million; that figure is a projection, not reported realized annual revenue.
Bitmine remained the world’s largest Ethereum treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury overall, behind Michael Saylor’s Strategy. Bitmine’s release put Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings at approximately 849,327 BTC.
The company also recently argued that the muted market reaction to the record Binance hack demonstrated growing crypto-market resilience. That interpretation, like Lee’s tokenization thesis, should be distinguished from the reported treasury balances: the accumulation figures establish the size of Bitmine’s exposure, but do not by themselves demonstrate broader or durable network adoption.
