Ethereum’s Biggest Corporate Buyer Just Hit the Brakes — Here’s Why That’s Not Bad News
Bitmine owns nearly 5% of all Ethereum but slashed its weekly buying by 76% to fund a stock buyback. Here's what that really means for ETH holders.
If you’ve ever wondered who’s been quietly hoovering up Ethereum while the rest of the market looked shaky, meet Bitmine Immersion Technologies. The Tom Lee-chaired company now holds 5,777,468 ETH — a stash worth somewhere between $10.85 billion and $11.5 billion depending on when you check the price, and equal to about 4.8% of every ETH that exists. But in the past few weeks, Bitmine has quietly slowed its buying to a crawl. Here’s why that matters, even if you only hold a handful of coins.
Almost 5% of Ethereum, sitting in one vault
Bitmine has spent roughly a year building what it calls its “Alchemy of 5%” plan — the goal of owning one-twentieth of all Ethereum in circulation. It’s now within touching distance, needing only around 250,000 more ETH to get there. That puts it second only to Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc., whose Bitcoin treasury is valued near $55 billion, in the ranking of publicly listed companies holding crypto on their balance sheets.
For everyday ETH holders, a treasury this large buying every week has effectively acted as a steady source of demand, something that’s helped cushion Ethereum’s price during rocky stretches. Bitmine’s average purchase price across its whole stash sits around $1,879 — almost exactly where Ethereum is trading now, near $1,856, inside the coin’s long-running support band of roughly $1,500 to $1,800.
Why the buying suddenly slowed down
The numbers tell the story clearly. In early July, Bitmine bought 42,197 ETH in a single week (around $74 million worth), followed by another purchase of roughly 27,800 to 30,500 ETH. Then, in the most recent week, that dropped to just 7,430 ETH — about $13.9 million, a fall of roughly 76% week-on-week.
The reason isn’t a loss of faith in Ethereum. It’s that Bitmine’s own share price, traded as BMNR, has taken a much harder hit than ETH itself. While Ethereum corrected around 8% since early June, BMNR shares plunged as much as 32% at their low point and were still down nearly 13% as of July 20. Seeing its own stock trading cheaply compared to the ETH it holds, Bitmine’s management decided the better bargain was buying itself.
The company tapped its previously approved $4 billion buyback program, spending about $86 million to repurchase roughly 5.5 million of its own shares at an average price of around $15.6 — six times more than it spent on ETH in the same stretch. The move sparked a sharp, V-shaped recovery in BMNR’s stock price. Chairman Tom Lee has said the company is still buying Ethereum every week and described the buyback as accretive to shareholders, not a retreat from crypto.
What this means for your wallet
Bitmine isn’t alone in stepping back. Strategy, the biggest corporate Bitcoin holder, paused its BTC buying a few weeks ago and even sold some Bitcoin before halting sales again, choosing instead to rebuild its cash reserves. Put together, it suggests the wave of “crypto treasury companies” that spent the last couple of years buying up coins is taking a breather — not because they’ve soured on crypto, but because their own stock prices have become the more urgent fire to put out.
For regular holders, this doesn’t change Ethereum’s fundamentals overnight, but it’s worth watching. These corporate whales have been a quiet tailwind for demand, and if more of them redirect cash toward buybacks instead of accumulation, that steady bid could soften — at least until stock prices stabilise and the buying resumes.
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