Bitmine Immersion Technologies added 10,452 ETH to its treasury over the past week, lifting its total to 6,051,933 ETH, or about 4.95% of Ethereum's 122.2 million token supply. That is the figure from the company's latest weekly update, reported by Decrypt on October 26. The purchase was worth roughly $24 million and leaves Tom Lee's firm within 0.05 percentage points of a goal it has branded the "alchemy of 5%."
Within 0.05 Points of a Self-Imposed Ceiling
Bitmine has said it will stop buying ETH once it owns 5% of the supply, and at 4.95% it is 99% of the way there. The accumulation phase that made it the largest corporate holder of Ethereum is close to ending by its own design.
The firm's combined crypto and securities holdings were worth about $15 billion as of October 25. Alongside the ETH, that includes 215 BTC, $514 million in cash and securities, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, and $76 million in Eightco Holdings. The Ethereum position by itself was valued near $14.3 billion at a $2,356 reference price. ETH traded at $2,329 on October 26, down 0.5% on the day and 2.7% over the week per CoinMarketCap data, so the live mark sits a little below that reference. The broader market was flat, with Bitcoin at $80,342 and the Fear and Greed Index at 44, firmly neutral.
Buying Its Own Stock Instead of More ETH
The bigger development was not the ETH purchase but what Bitmine did with the rest of its capital. The company repurchased 2.04 million of its own shares this week at an average price of $22.48, taking its 2026 buyback total to 22.9 million shares for about $399.6 million. Bitmine describes it as the largest equity buyback by any crypto treasury firm.
The shift matters because of what a buyback signals. A company repurchases stock when it believes the shares are priced below the value of what it holds. For a treasury vehicle whose assets are almost entirely liquid ETH, buying back shares is effectively a judgment that its own stock is a cheaper way to own Ethereum than buying the token on the open market. Read as analysis rather than fact, the pivot suggests management sees its equity trading at a discount to the crypto on its balance sheet, a recurring tension for the public companies built around a single digital asset. That is a different posture from the pure accumulation story that defined the firm through most of 2026.
Staking Revenue Funds the Strategy
The accumulation and the buybacks both rest on a yield engine. About 5,227,037 ETH, or 86% of Bitmine's holdings, is staked through the MAVAN platform, generating a projected $318 million in annual staking revenue. That income stream lets the company fund operations and repurchases without selling down its core position, which is the point of running an Ethereum treasury rather than simply holding spot ETH in cold storage.
Tom Lee, the Fundstrat co-founder who chairs the firm, framed the recent price pullback as a buying opportunity rather than a warning, saying "a crypto bull market is underway." The market data does not obviously confirm that read, with ETH down over the week and sentiment stuck at neutral, but the firm's actions are consistent with the statement: it kept buying ETH and it bought back stock into weakness.
Treasury Firms Running Out of Runway
Bitmine's near-completion of its 5% target raises a question that applies to the whole class of crypto treasury companies. Once accumulation stops, the story shifts from "how much can they buy" to "what do they do with the yield and the equity." Buybacks are one answer. They return capital, tighten the share count, and lean on the gap between a company's market value and the assets it controls.
For Ethereum specifically, having a single entity hold 5% of supply, with the overwhelming majority of it staked, concentrates a meaningful slice of the network's economic security in one treasury. That is a structural change worth watching regardless of where the price goes next. At 4.95%, Bitmine is one more weekly purchase away from drawing the line it set for itself.
Overview
Bitmine added 10,452 ETH to reach 6,051,933 ETH, about 4.95% of Ethereum's supply, and says it will halt buying at 5%. The firm's $15 billion in holdings is anchored by an ETH position worth roughly $14.3 billion, 86% of it staked for a projected $318 million in annual revenue. The headline move was a pivot to record share buybacks: 2.04 million shares this week and 22.9 million for $399.6 million in 2026, which Bitmine calls the largest by any crypto treasury firm. The buyback hints that management views its stock as cheaper than ETH itself, a signal to watch as the accumulation phase winds down.
