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At this week's pace Bitmine is six to eight weeks from holding 5% of ether supply, where it says buying stops

Bitmine bought another 12,532 ETH last week, lifting its holdings to 6,028,946 ETH, or 4.9% of supply. Chairman Tom Lee says purchases end at 5%, 76,000 to 100,000 ETH away, so the position is close to its final size.

The Investor · Invest desk

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Photograph accompanying At this week's pace Bitmine is six to eight weeks from holding 5% of ether supply, where it says buying stops
Photo: decrypt.co
What Bitmine has left to buy before its 5% stop ETH held, ETH bought over the past week, and more ETH needed to reach the 5% target: by supply math, and as Tom Lee estimates it.

Key figures: Bitmine holds 6,028,946 ETH, 4.9% of Ethereum's supply. It bought 12,532 ETH over the past week. It needs about 76,054 more ETH to reach 5% of supply; Tom Lee says it needs about 100,000 more ETH.

What Bitmine has left to buy before its 5% stop
FigureValueNoteClaim
Bitmine's ETH holdings, 4.9% of Ethereum's supply6,028,946 ETH2
Bought over the past week12,532 ETH1
To 5% of supply, about76,054 more ETH18
Lee says needed, about100,000 more ETH4

What happened

  • Of that holding, 5,067,309 ETH is staked, about 84% of the treasury and $12.9 billion at Bitmine's reference price.
  • The $16.2 billion total also counts 214 BTC, $612 million in cash and marketable securities, and stakes in Beast Industries ($180 million) and Eightco ($85 million).
  • Lee says the company has bought ETH every week since its treasury strategy began on June 30, 2025.
  • BMNR shares fell 12.8% over the last five trading sessions but are up more than 55% over three months, according to news.bitcoin.com.

Why it matters

  • constraint The buying that built the position is already thinning: this week's purchase is about 14% of the roughly 90,000 ETH weekly average, if the whole holding was bought since the strategy began.
  • exposure Each $100 move in ether changes the value of the holding by about $603 million, roughly 1.8 times a full year of the $336 million staking income.
  • contradiction Lee calls BMNR 90% correlated with ETH, yet his $22,000 ether case puts the stock at 11.5 to 19.2 times its $26 level against an 8.65-fold move in the coin.

At the 122.1 million ETH supply the company cites [3], 5% is 6.105 million tokens [17], and the 6,028,946 ETH Bitmine holds [2] leaves 76,054 to buy [18]. This week's purchase was 12,532 ETH [1], worth $31.9 million [11] against $41 million the week before [10], so the gap closes in a little over six weeks if the pace holds [19]. Chairman Tom Lee's own distance is longer. He said Bitmine needs "about 100,000 more ETH, and that's about it" [4], and at the same pace that is eight weeks [20].

Funding does not set that limit. At the company's $2,544 price [8] the 76,054 ETH costs about $193.5 million [25], or 32% of the $612 million in cash and marketable securities it reports [26]. (The ether already held is worth about $15.34 billion at that price [8].) The stop is therefore a decision, and Lee has said what he expects from it: "So if we're done stacking, but ETH goes up a lot, you can imagine that we'll outperform Ethereum," he said [30].

Staking is where the position can still change. The 5,067,309 staked ETH [6] equals 4.15% of the supply [21], and 961,637 ETH is not yet staked [22]. The company puts staking income at about $336 million a year now [7] and projects $400 million once everything is staked through MAVAN and its staking partners, at a 2.61% seven-day yield [13]. That is a $64 million gap [27]. MAVAN has also been opened to institutional investors, custodians and other participants [16], so Bitmine's own balance may understate the stake running through its validators. The sources do not give the network's total staked ETH, so Bitmine's share of all staked ether cannot be worked out from them.

There are three ways this runs differently. The target is the company's own number and can be raised. Any growth in the 122.1 million supply lifts the 6.105 million threshold with it. Or the weekly pace keeps shrinking, and the target takes longer than eight weeks. We think the buying ends at the target, as Lee has said [5], and that the open question after that is staking, where 961,637 ETH remain to be added. We would be wrong if purchases run past 6.105 million ETH or Lee names a new percentage.

What to watch

  • Whether the staked count moves from 5,067,309 ETH toward the full holding in the weekly updates, and the $336 million income estimate toward $400 million.
  • Any disclosure of total ETH staked on the network or of third-party stake run through MAVAN, which would let Bitmine's share of staking be calculated.
  • What Lee's next monthly Chairman's message says about the $612 million in cash and marketable securities once ether purchases end.

Clarity's read

What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Insufficient
Hype gap+35
Incentives70
Confidence72
Why these scores

Claim ledger

Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.

  1. [1]

    Bitmine bought 12,532 ETH over the past week, the company said Monday.

    ReportedSupported2 sources— create a free account to open themView cited source
  2. [2]

    Bitmine's holdings stand at 6,028,946 ETH, which is 4.9% of Ethereum's supply.

    ReportedSupported2 sources— create a free account to open themView cited source
  3. [3]

    The total Ethereum token supply used by the company is 122.1 million ETH.

    ReportedSupported2 sources— create a free account to open themView cited source

Sources

3 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.

  1. coindesk.com

    1 article · October 12, 2026

    Tom Lee sees $2 trillion wealth transfer fueling crypto demand as Bitmine buys more ether
  2. decrypt.co

    1 article · October 12, 2026

    Bitmine Adds $32M in Ethereum as Tom Lee Says Firm Is Nearly 'Done Stacking'
  3. news.bitcoin.com

    1 article · October 12, 2026

    Bitmine Surpasses 6M ETH, Closing In on 5% of Ethereum Supply

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