- Bitmine continues its Ethereum (ETH) purchases despite its unrealized losses in the asset ballooning to $10 billion.
- Tom Lee, the company’s chair, is confident that Ether is already past the crypto winter phase and that its demand will scale with developments in AI.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) has been unwavering in its commitment to the second-largest crypto asset by market cap. On Monday, the company announced another purchase despite its mounting unrealized losses from the crypto winter.
Status of Bitmine’s Ethereum Treasury
According to Bitmine’s recent press release, it acquired 126,971 ETH over the past week. On-chain data in Blockzeit’s Bitmine Ethereum Purchase History shows that the batch cost $1,630.36 per ETH, for a total of $207.01 million. This significantly surpassed Strategy’s (formerly MicroStrategy) $101.3 million Bitcoin (BTC) buy within the same period.
The latest purchase increases Bitmine’s holdings to 5,543,872 ETH. The figures account for roughly 4.6% of Ether’s 120.68 million circulating supply. Additionally, it moves the company closer to achieving its “Alchemy of 5%” goal, which aims to lock in 5% of Ethereum’s token supply.
The top-up stacks with Bitmine’s 204 BTC holdings, $180 million stake in Beast Industries, $88 million stake in Eightco Holdings (ORBS), and total cash reserves of $247 million.
To optimize earnings from its rising digital asset treasury, Bitmine staked 4,718,677 ETH across its proprietary MAVAN (Made in America Validator Network) and staking partners. Tom Lee, Chairman of Bitmine, estimates that the staked ETH, comprising approximately 85% of the institution’s Ether portfolio, generates around $230 million annually.
At scale, when Bitmine stakes all of its ETH treasury, the projected returns could soar to $270 million.
Mounting Unrealized Losses in ETH
To date, Bitmine has allocated more than $19.04 billion to its Ethereum playbook. At the time of its disclosure, the value of its ETH reserves had fallen to $9.039 billion, indicating unrealized losses of over $10 billion.
Nonetheless, Lee reiterated that the market is already at the early stages of crypto spring. At this rate, he expects Bitmine to fulfill its “Alchemy of 5%” target within this year.
Moreover, the chairman considered the recent crypto price drawdowns as a knee-jerk reaction to the Zcash (ZEC) controversy. He called the ensuing sell-off a “superficial take” on the revelation of the longtime vulnerability in the privacy-focused chain, which would have allowed exploiters to mint unlimited counterfeit ZEC tokens.
Lee believes Ethereum’s demand will scale with the developments in the AI (artificial intelligence) sector. He sees the chain as a crucial ingredient in addressing the growing demand for decentralized and hardened solutions, particularly to protect users from agentic systems.
Furthermore, the entrepreneur highlighted that Ethereum’s demand will surge as AI systems will eventually uncover flaws in centralized financial services rails and weak decentralized protocols.
“We believe this actually strengthens the use case and product market fit for hardened and reliable decentralized blockchains like Ethereum,” Lee commented. “Thus, we believe ETH prices should not be coming under pressure.”
