Tom Lee's BitMine Makes Biggest Ethereum Buy Yet in 2026

In brief

• BitMine Immersion Technologies added more than $116 million in Ethereum last week.
• The firm now holds more than 4.2 million ETH, or greater than 3.5% of the circulating supply.
• Nevertheless, shares continue to fall, down more than 3% on Monday and greater than 10% in the last five trading days.

Leading Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies acquired another 40,302 ETH, valued around $116 million, over the course of the last week, the firm announced on Monday. The $116 million addition is the firm’s largest Ethereum buy so far in 2026, measured both in amount of ETH and U.S. dollar value at the time of announcement. The acquisition continues its relentless string of ETH purchases, bringing its total haul to 4,243,338 ETH or $12.2 billion at today’s ETH prices. "Ethereum’s price ratio to Bitcoin, or ETHBTC, has been steadily climbing since mid-October. In our view, this reflects investors recognizing tokenization and other use cases being developed by Wall Street are being built on Ethereum.” 

The ratio dropped in the last week, as BTC outperformed ETH by only dropping 5.5% compared to ETH’s 9.5% drop. But Lee remains encouraged by the growing embrace of Ethereum and its importance to major industry trends, like tokenization of real-world assets, highlighting commentary from financial leaders at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  “In 2016, the story of Davos was AI and the fourth industrial revolution, and in the decade since, we have witnessed the massive growth of AI and data centers and complete pivots by nations,” said Lee.  “A decade later, we view 2026 as the year policymakers and world leaders now view digital assets as central to the future of the financial system,” he added. “Ethereum remains the most widely used by Wall Street today, and most reliable blockchain with zero downtime since inception.”  The firm, which now holds more than 3.5% of the entire Ethereum circulating supply, also added to its staked ETH holdings in the last week, boosting its total staked ETH to 2,009,267 or about $5.8 billion, just less than half of its total holdings. In other words, the firm effectively locks its ETH tokens to help secure the Ethereum network and earns a staking reward for doing so.

While it is currently working with three staking providers, it still expects to launch its own validator network—Made in America Validator Network (MAVAN)—sometime in early 2026. When its holdings are fully staked, BitMine anticipates that it will earn more than $1 million per day in staking rewards.  Shares in the firm (BMNR) are down around 3.3% to open the week, and have fallen more than 10% in the last five trading days to recently change hands at $27.82. Meanwhile, ETH is down 0.6% the last 24 hours and trading at $2,908—more than 40% below its August all-time high of $4,946.