Bitmine Hits the Snooze Button on ETH Buys, Spends $86M Yawning Into Its Own Stock

Bitmine Immersion Technologies added just 7,430 ETH, worth roughly $14 million, over the past week, bringing its Ethereum treasury to 5,777,468 ETH, or about 4.8% of the token's circulating supply, according to a Monday announcement. The company is the largest corporate holder of $ETH and the second-largest corporate digital asset treasury behind Strategy, valuing its combined crypto, cash and marketable securities at $11.5 billion, including 207 Bitcoin and $385 million in cash and securities. Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee tied the slowdown in accumulation to a share repurchase, telling shareholders the firm bought back 5.5 million common shares at an average price of $15.6156, totaling nearly $86 million under its previously authorized $4 billion buyback program. "The reduced pace of buys reflects that Bitmine repurchased 5.5 million common shares," Lee said, noting the company has acquired $ETH every week since launching its treasury strategy on June 30, 2025.

The latest addition is among Bitmine's smallest weekly purchases since the strategy began. The company scooped up more than 111,000 ETH in a single week in May. About 4.9 million $ETH, or roughly 85% of the treasury, is staked through Bitmine's MAVAN validator platform, with projected annualized revenue near $247 million. Separately, MAVAN generated $45.7 million in staking and validation revenue during the three-month period ended May 31, accounting for 98% of total company revenue, Bitmine said earlier this month. Bitmine also reported a $180 million stake in Beast Industries and a $58 million position in Eightco Holdings. Shares of Bitmine, trading as BMNR, were up more than 6% on Monday at $16.61, a roughly 3.3% gain over the past month.

Bitmine's shift in capital allocation comes as Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, paused $BTC purchases for a second straight week and instead raised $263.5 million by selling 2,732,318 MSTR shares through its at-the-market offering program between July 13 and July 19, pushing its cash reserve above $3.2 billion. $ETH has outpaced $BTC in recent sessions, gaining about 6.7% over the past seven days and 10% over the past month, compared with $BTC gains of roughly 5.8% and 2.6%, respectively, according to CoinGecko data cited in the Monday report.

In a separate development, the European Central Bank's Piero Cipollone warned at a banking conference in Rome on Friday that stablecoins threaten to erode bank deposits, framing the digital euro as a structural counterweight. Meanwhile, Robinhood's Ethereum layer-2 network, Robinhood Chain, built on Arbitrum, attracted more than $141 million in bridged $ETH during its first two weeks after launch, drawing commentary from industry analysts. Bitwise senior research analyst Max Shannon told Cointelegraph the chain reflects the "growth of the Ethereum ecosystem" among traditional financial institutions, while ARK Invest's Lorenzo Valente argued it supports the bullish case for $ETH as the ecosystem's monetary asset but weakens the thesis that Ethereum derives significant value from layer-2 fee revenue. Bernstein analysts raised their Robinhood price target to $160 from $130 on Monday, citing tokenized equities and prediction markets as drivers.