BitMine, the largest corporate holder of Ether, will stop buying once it owns 5% of the circulating supply.
Chairman Tom Lee said so on stage at Token2049 in Singapore on Wednesday. The company is about 100,000 ETH short of the mark. At last week’s pace of around $41 million in purchases, that is roughly six to seven weeks of buying.
How close it is
BitMine holds 6,016,414 ETH according to its latest disclosure, about 4.9% of supply. At around $2,570, that stake is worth roughly $15.5 billion.
“We thought this would take five years,” Lee said. “It took us a little over a year.”
The company has bought every week since launching its Ether treasury strategy in June 2025. “More importantly, we did this all in the middle of a bear market,” Lee added. “Now we’re going to stop.”
A cap that works both ways
Lee described 5% as a hard cap that optimises value for shareholders. It works in both directions: he said BitMine could sell some of its staked ETH to keep its share from drifting above the line.
That matters because the stake is underwater. BitMine’s holdings carry roughly $4.5 billion in unrealised losses, according to tracking data, which puts the average purchase price somewhere above $3,300 an Ether.
What it means for ETH
For more than a year, BitMine has been a steady weekly buyer, adding tens of millions of dollars of ETH regardless of price. Within weeks that demand stops.
The announcement landed on a weak day for Ether, which fell about 5.5% to around $2,570 on the same day an oil-driven sell-off hit crypto markets.
