Bitmine Immersion Technologies has staked roughly $4.7 million worth of Ether from its holdings, with the company projecting annualized staking revenues of $276 million — a yield strategy that sets it apart from firms that simply hold crypto on their books.
The Staking Angle
That revenue push comes alongside Bitmine’s biggest single purchase of the year. The company acquired 111,942 ETH last week, stepping in after prices slid below $2,200, a level Chairman Tom Lee described as an attractive buying opportunity.
Ether has been trading between roughly $2,025 and $2,147 over the past seven days.
Lee tied the purchase to a broader outlook he has been pushing for months. He believes a crypto supercycle is coming, driven by Wall Street’s growing interest in tokenization and the rise of AI-powered agents.
“We continue to steadily acquire ETH, with Bitmine now owning nearly 5.4 million ETH tokens,” Lee said in a statement.
1/ BitMine provided its latest holdings update for May 26, 2026
$12.3 billion in total crypto + “moonshots”: – 5,390,404 ETH at $2,134 per ETH per ETH (@coinbase) – 202 Bitcoin (BTC) – $200 million stake in Beast Industries…
— Bitmine (NYSE-BMNR) $ETH (@BitMNR) May 26, 2026
A Target Still Within Reach
Bitmine’s goal is to own 5% of Ether’s circulating supply, which currently stands at 120.7 million tokens. To get there, the company still needs around 644,596 ETH — a gap Lee said will be closed sometime this year.
The firm had slowed its buying pace earlier in May after snapping up more than 100,000 ETH per week for three straight weeks before resuming with this latest purchase.
Bitmine follows a model similar to Strategy, the Bitcoin treasury company led by Michael Saylor, which has built its business around accumulating crypto regardless of market conditions.
Ether hit an all-time high of $4,946 in August 2025 but has dropped more than 58% since then. Lee has previously argued that steep pullbacks in ETH prices represent buying opportunities rather than warning signs.
Staking Pressure Builds Across Industry
Reports from staking infrastructure provider Everstake say ETH treasury companies are under mounting pressure to generate income through staking and other yield methods.
The appeal of simply holding Ether as a public company has been dulled by the growing popularity of spot crypto exchange-traded funds, reports say.
Staked supply has hit a fresh record. Data shows more than 39 million ETH — roughly 32% of total supply — is currently locked in, with another 3.3 million waiting in the entry queue.
About 234,368 ETH is sitting in the exit queue.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
News Link: https://bitcoinist.com/bitmine-stuns-market-with-largest-ethereum-buy-of-2026-as-tom-lee-turns-bullish/