Bitmine, a company led by Tom Lee that owns the largest treasury of ether (ETH) in the world, took advantage of the recent price drop to buy 111,942 units of this cryptocurrency, an operation valued at more than $240 million.
The purchase was announced by the company itself on May 25, 2026. As Lee explained, “the recent drop in ETH below $2,200 represents an attractive opportunity.”
With this new acquisition, Bitmine raised its total holdings to 5,390,404 ETH. At the current price of the Ethereum cryptocurrency, close to $2,083, that position is equivalent to approximately $11.2 billion.
As detailed by the company, these reserves represent around 4.47% of the total supply of ETH, approaching the goal of reaching 5% of the circulating supply, something Lee calls “the alchemy of 5%.”
Taking as a reference the current supply of Ethereum, estimated at 120.7 million ETH, Bitmine would still need to accumulate approximately another 639,000 ETH to reach that goal.
Despite these announcements, it is not all good news for Bitmine. Due to the fall of ETH, the firm registers unrealized losses for more than 7.5 billion dollars.
The largest gray bar represents Bitmine, currently the company with the largest unrealized losses within the cryptocurrency treasury sector.
It should be noted that unrealized losses are drops in value that have not yet become effective losses because the assets remain in the company’s possession and were not sold. That is to say, The loss exists in accounting and market valuation terms, but it does not materialize as long as the company maintains those positions.
Bitmine uses a model similar to that popularized by Strategy with bitcoin (BTC), but applied to ETH: using a public company as a vehicle to accumulate large amounts of a digital asset with the expectation of long-term appreciation.
However, Bitmine seeks to differentiate itself through institutional ETH staking. Currently, the company maintains 4,712,917 ETH in stake through MAVAN, its institutional validation platform, as explained by CriptoNoticias. That equates to more than 87% of all its ether reserves.
Staking involves locking ETH within the network to participate in transaction validation and receive regular rewards in return.
According to Bitmine, that trade currently generates an estimated annualized revenue of $276 million, using a yield close to 2.75%. “Bitmine has staked more ETH than any other entity in the world,” Lee said.
The company maintains that the growth of tokenization of financial assets and The development of artificial intelligence (AI) will drive a “supercycle” for Ethereum over the next few years. Based on this hope, the company led by Tom Lee continues its accumulation of ether despite the large losses.