Bitmine added 71,672 ETH to its treasury and said it aims to control 5% of Ethereum’s supply by 2026.
Ethereum News
Bitmine Immersion Technologies added 71,672 Ether (ETH) to its treasury over the past week, bringing its total holdings to more than 5.28 million tokens. The company's chairman, Tom Lee, said the purchase was timed to take advantage of ETH slipping below $2,200.
"We view the recent pullback of ETH to below $2,200 as an attractive opportunity," Lee said in a May 19 statement. "Bitmine is expected to reach the alchemy of 5% sometime in 2026."
ETH traded between $2,081 and $2,341 over the past seven days and was priced around $2,128 on Tuesday, down 8.7% over the same period. The token reached an all-time high of $4,946 in August 2025 and has since fallen roughly 57%.
Bitmine operates as the largest ETH treasury company, following a model similar to Strategy's Bitcoin (BTC) accumulation approach. The company's target is to hold more than 6 million ETH, representing 5% of the token's circulating supply of 120.7 million. It still needs approximately 756,538 tokens to reach that goal.
The latest purchase follows a slower week between May 4 and May 11, when Bitmine added 26,659 ETH, breaking a three-week streak of buying more than 100,000 tokens per week.
On-chain analytics platform Lookonchain reported on May 16 that a long-term ETH holder who had sold their entire position roughly one year ago re-entered the market over the weekend, buying 1,951 ETH at $2,182 per coin. Lookonchain speculated the whale "may keep buying."
Lee attributed part of ETH's price weakness to rising oil prices following geopolitical tensions earlier this year, and said a reversal in oil prices could support a recovery. Citigroup projected in March that ETH could reach $3,175 over the next 12 months, with a bull case of $4,488 driven by stablecoin and tokenization demand.
Standard Chartered's head of digital assets research, Geoffrey Kendrick, offered a more aggressive outlook in January, forecasting that ETH could hit $7,500 by year-end on the back of growing blockchain adoption and on-chain product usage.
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