BitMine adds smallest weekly ETH amount since August while nearing 5% target
BitMine Immersion Technologies disclosed its smallest weekly ether purchase since the week to August 16, even as combined crypto, cash and equity holdings reached $17.4 billion. The slowdown matters because BitMine is now 98% of the way to its self-imposed goal of owning 5% of all ether, meaning its outsized weekly demand for ETH is likely to keep fading from here.
- BitMine added 15,112 ETH in the week to October 4, 2026, down from 17,362 ETH the week before.
- Ether holdings now total 6,016,414 tokens, equal to 4.9% of the 122.1 million ETH in circulation.
- Cash and marketable securities fell to $643 million, down from $672 million a week earlier and $714 million on September 20.
- 15,112 ETH bought this week versus 17,362 ETH the prior week
- 4.9% of global ETH supply, just under BitMine’s 5% target
- 731bp BMNR share outperformance over ETH through nine months of 2026
BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR) said in a press release that its crypto, cash and “moonshot” equity stakes together totaled $17.4 billion as of October 4, 2026 (Saturday) at 6:30 p.m. ET. The Norwalk, Connecticut company added 15,112 ETH over the week, lifting its treasury to 6,016,414 tokens, equal to 4.9% of the 122.1 million ETH in circulation. That is the smallest weekly addition since the week to August 16, 2026, when BitMine bought 9,926 ETH, and well below the 17,362 ETH it purchased seven days earlier.
The pace, first detailed by CryptoPotato, leaves BitMine just short of the 5% ownership target. The company values its holdings at $2,726 per ETH using Coinbase pricing, a figure that also covers 214 Bitcoin, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries and $117 million in Eightco Holdings (ORBS).
BitMine’s Cash Buffer Shrinks for a Third Straight Week
Cash and marketable securities dropped to $643 million, down from $672 million the week before and $714 million on September 20, 2026, a decline of roughly 10% in two weeks. The slide coincides with both continued ETH accumulation and an active share buyback, suggesting BitMine is drawing down reserves on two fronts at once rather than one.
BitMine still ranks as the world’s largest ether treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury globally, trailing only Strategy Inc (NASDAQ: MSTR), which holds 847,666 BTC valued near $78 billion. That gap dwarfs BitMine’s $17.4 billion position, underscoring how far behind bitcoin’s largest corporate holder BitMine’s ether strategy still sits even after 15 months of weekly buying, a pattern similar to the incremental approach Strategy itself has taken with moves like its $28.7 million bitcoin purchase funded by stock sale proceeds.
Tom Lee Credits Buyback for 731 Basis Point Outperformance
BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said the company’s shares fell just 3% over the first nine months of 2026 while ETH itself dropped 10%, a gap of 731 basis points he attributed partly to share repurchases.
We believe that as crypto enters a cycle we view as a bull market, what is notable is Bitmine’s share price outperformance of ETH during the bear market of 2025-2026.
Tom Lee, Chairman, BitMine Immersion Technologies
Lee said BitMine has bought back 21 million of its own shares in 2026, which he called the largest equity buyback by any crypto treasury company, running under a $4 billion authorization. An August 17 update put repurchases since July 1 at 20.8 million shares, yet none of the six weekly filings between August 24 and September 28 reported further buying, a gap that stands alongside the broader treasury-company pattern seen in Strategy’s own 8-K disclosing a $5.02 billion reserve.
MAVAN’s New Operator Takes a Flat 1.5% Fee on Staking
Ethereum Towers, the firm that had run BitMine’s staking operations since March 2026 in exchange for a share of net rewards, ended that arrangement on September 3, 2026. BitMine disclosed the termination in a September 8 filing and said it incurred no material early-termination penalty.
Since September 4, American Validator, an Ethereum Towers affiliate, has advised MAVAN, the institutional-grade staking platform (Made in America VAlidator Network) BitMine built this year to run its own ether and serve outside custodians and institutional investors.
American Validator earns a flat 1.5% of staking rewards, replacing the prior revenue-share structure whose percentage BitMine never disclosed, making it hard to judge whether the swap actually cuts costs.
BitMine reported 5,067,309 ETH staked, or 84% of its treasury, a figure that has not moved across nine consecutive weekly updates since August 9, 2026. At full scale, the document projects annualized staking rewards of $431 million at a 2.63% yield, against $363 million currently generated from the 84% already staked, leaving open whether BitMine plans to stake the remaining 16% or has deliberately held it back, a question that sits alongside broader custody questions regulators are weighing in the SEC’s proposed crypto custody rule for investment advisers.
Tom Lee Keynotes Token2049 in Singapore on October 7
Lee is scheduled to deliver a 20-minute keynote at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday (October 7) at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, part of Token2049, which the company describes as the world’s largest crypto conference. BitMine also said it will publish its October Chairman’s Message this week under the title “Crypto bull underway, this cycle likely the largest.”
On trading liquidity, Fundstrat data cited in the release puts BitMine’s five-day average daily doll
