Bitmine added another 26,497 Ether to its treasury this past week, worth about $52 million, but the pace has slowed sharply from the triple-digit-thousand weekly buys the miner was making earlier in the month. The company now holds 5.4 million ETH — roughly $10.5 billion — putting it at 90% of its goal to own 5% of Ethereum's entire circulating supply. Yet Ethereum's price hasn't budged. It fell 4.7% over the same stretch, swinging between $1,963 and $2,126.
The accumulation slowdown
For three consecutive weeks earlier this year, Bitmine was scooping up more than 100,000 ETH each week. This week's purchase represents a steep drop-off. The company's treasury plan, launched in July 2025, originally aimed to capture 5% of Ethereum's total circulating supply by sometime in 2026. With 5.4 million tokens already in the vault and total supply sitting at 120.6 million, Bitmine is closing in — but the buying spree is clearly losing momentum. The $52 million outlay is still substantial by any normal standard, but the taper suggests the company may be nearing its target or adjusting for market conditions.
A price disconnect
Bitmine's continued buying — even at a reduced cadence — hasn't lifted the Ether price. That's unusual. A whale adding millions to its position typically provides a floor, or at least a psychological boost. Not this time. Tom Lee, the veteran analyst, weighed in this week, arguing that Ethereum's price simply doesn't reflect its strengthening fundamentals. He pointed to three catalysts: AI-driven commerce, decentralized identity tools, and Wall Street's push into tokenization. “The market is wrong here,” Lee said, according to the facts provided.
Bitmine's acquisition strategy is one of the most aggressive corporate treasury plays in crypto. If it reaches that 5% threshold, it would own one in every twenty Ether in existence — a concentrated position that few miners have attempted at this scale. The timing matters. The broader market is still digesting regulatory moves and macro uncertainty, but Lee's argument that the fundamentals are improving isn't easily dismissed. Decentralized identity and AI-driven commerce are real, if early, use cases. Tokenization on Ethereum is accelerating. Whether those factors eventually break the price out of its narrow range is the open question. For now, Bitmine keeps buying, just more slowly.
