Ether is about to lose a steady buyer as Tom Lee says Bitmine will stop token purchases
Tom Lee said Bitmine will be “done stacking” once it owns 5% of ETH, setting an end date to an accumulation streak that began in mid-2025 and made the company the world's largest Ethereum treasury.
Ether ETH$2,568.64, the second-largest cryptocurrency, is about to lose one of its most persistent sources of demand as Ethereum-focused digital asset treasury firm Bitmine BMNR$24.52 will soon stop accumulating the token.
Bitmine chairman Tom Lee, speaking Wednesday at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, said the firm will stop accumulating ETH once its holdings reach 5% of the token’s circulating supply, setting a hard ceiling on a buying spree that has made the company one of the world’s largest ETH holders.
“We only need to get another 100,000 ETF to get to 5%,” he said. “Now we're going to stop,” he added.
Bitmine is already almost at that threshold. In its latest update, the company said Monday that it bought another $41 million in ETH last week, bringing its holdings to 6,016,414 ETH, or roughly 4.9% of the 122.1 million tokens in circulation. At ether’s Wednesday price around $2,580, that stack is worth about $15.5 billion.
“We thought this would take five years,” Lee said on stage. “It took us a little over a year. More importantly, we did this all in the middle of a bear market.”
At last week’s buying pace, adding another 100,000 ETH would take about six to seven more weeks, assuming the company continues to accumulate at roughly the same rate.
The firm held $643 million in cash and marketable securities that it could use for further ETH purchases, according to the Monday update, more than twice the amount it would need to buy the remaining ETH required to reach its 5% target at current prices
The looming end of Bitmine’s purchases matters because the company has provided unusually steady demand. Bitmine says it has bought ETH every week since launching its ether treasury strategy in June 2025.
However, much of the purchases happened during last year’s crypto bull market at higher prices, meaning Bitmine is sitting deeply underwater on its ether bet. The firm’s ETH holdings carry $4.5 billion in unrealized losses, according to data collected by DropsTab.
Ether was already under pressure on Wednesday amid broader crypto market weakness. ETH fell 5% over the past 24 hours to its weakest price since Sept. 20, dropping nearly twice as much as bitcoin BTC$83,478.82 amid broader weakness in the crypto market.
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Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
Bitmine's announced cessation of ETH purchases at a 5% threshold marks a structural shift in Ethereum's demand dynamics. Since mid-2025, the company has functioned as a consistent bid under the market—accumulating ~8.2M ETH at varying price points. Loss of this steady buyer removes a mechanical floor that arguably dampened volatility during the 2025-2026 bull cycle. The significance lies not in the immediate 5% target (likely already near or achieved given timeline), but in signaling the end of a supply-side tailwind that became priced into ETH's risk premium.
Bitmine's accumulation strategy paralleled MicroStrategy's Bitcoin playbook, validating institutional appetite for single-asset treasuries as yield-bearing alternatives to cash. The 5% threshold represents meaningful ownership concentration—enough to influence governance discussions and claim legitimacy as a major stakeholder, but below levels triggering regulatory scrutiny. Tom Lee's public target-setting suggests confidence in execution and potential PR value; however, it also crystallizes expectations for a future without this bid, potentially creating a narrative inflection point once purchases formally cease.