Bitmine Immersion Technologies purchased 101,901 ether worth roughly $234 million last week, its largest single-week accumulation of 2026 and a figure that places the Tom Lee-chaired treasury firm alongside Strategy as one of the few major corporate crypto buyers still actively absorbing supply at scale. The purchase was flagged by crypto trader Luke Martin, who noted in a post on X that Bitmine’s weekly buying pace is now approaching the baseline range Strategy typically deploys on bitcoin.
Strategy, led by Michael Saylor, generally spends between $200 million and $300 million per week on bitcoin when large at-the-market bursts tied to its perpetual preferred stock STRC are excluded.
Those STRC-fueled spikes, including a $2.54 billion purchase recorded on April 21, are outliers rather than the firm’s routine accumulation rhythm. Strip those out and Bitmine’s $234 million week sits squarely inside the same operating band.
Four Months of Escalating Buys
Bitmine’s $234 million purchase caps a four-month escalation that began at roughly $76 million per week in early January 2026.
The company pivoted to its current ether treasury strategy in June 2025 and reached the 5 million ETH milestone in approximately 10 months, a pace that Fundstrat co-founder and Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee has framed as deliberate accumulation during what he describes as the late stages of a “mini-crypto winter.”
Lee has also pointed to stabilizing equity markets as part of his rationale for continuing to buy, arguing that a broader market bottom is forming. Whether that read proves correct or not, the buying program has remained consistent through a period when most other digital asset treasury companies pulled back.
Bitmine now holds more than 5 million ether, representing approximately 4.21% of the second-largest cryptocurrency’s circulating supply.
That concentration makes the firm a structurally significant demand source for ETH, a dynamic that mirrors the role Strategy has played in bitcoin markets since launching its own treasury strategy in 2020.
Staking Revenue and Total Holdings
Beyond accumulation, Bitmine has staked roughly 73% of its ether holdings, generating an estimated $264 million in annualized yield from those staked tokens.
That revenue stream distinguishes Bitmine’s model from Strategy’s bitcoin treasury in a meaningful way, since bitcoin generates no native yield and Strategy’s returns are entirely dependent on price appreciation and capital markets activity.
Total crypto and cash holdings across the firm sat at $13.3 billion as of early April, according to company disclosures.
The staking income adds a recurring revenue dimension to what would otherwise be a purely price-dependent balance sheet, giving Bitmine a partial hedge against prolonged periods of ether price weakness.
That resilience was tested earlier this year. Bitmine was sitting on nearly $8 billion in unrealized losses at one point during the first quarter, when ether fell below $1,900 alongside broader crypto market declines.
Rather than pausing purchases as many peers did, the firm accelerated its buying program, adding more tokens at lower prices and increasing its average accumulation per week throughout the quarter.
Most digital asset treasury companies operating on a similar model did the opposite. A wave of corporate crypto buyers that emerged through late 2024 and early 2025 scaled back or halted purchases entirely during the February price slide that pushed bitcoin into the mid-$60,000 range and compressed ether sharply.
Strategy itself ended a 13-week consecutive bitcoin buying streak in late March before resuming purchases in April.
Bitmine maintained its cadence through all of it. The result is that the firm now stands as the only corporate crypto buyer other than Strategy consistently absorbing supply on a weekly basis at nine-figure scale.
Whether a third major corporate accumulator emerges at comparable size remains an open question, but for now the dynamic is largely a two-company story, with one focused on bitcoin and the other making an increasingly large structural bet on ether.
The gap between their weekly buying pace, once STRC outliers are removed from Strategy’s figures, has narrowed to a matter of tens of millions of dollars.
Not Financial Advice: This article is for informational purposes only. Crypto investments are highly volatile. Always do your own research.
