Following its most recent weekly purchases, the Ethereum treasury entity Bitmine (BMNR), chaired by Tom Lee, has elevated its reserves to 5,983,940 ETH, which translates to roughly $16.3 billion at present market rates.
Bitmine acquired an additional 27,562 ETH subsequent to its prior update on September 14, sharing on Monday that its combined cryptocurrency, cash reserves, marketable securities, and alternative investments reached $17.1 billion. Although Bitmine omitted the average purchase cost, the latest acquisition is valued at approximately $75 million based on current prices.
“We believe a crypto bull market is underway, having started in late June, driven by a multitude of factors including the rotation from AI back to crypto, strengthening crypto fundamentals centered around both tokenization and AI and lastly, the ending of the 4-year cycle,” Lee stated within the announcement. “Quarter to date, ETH is outperforming by 6,519bp, dwarfing other macro assets.”
“To us, this massive outperformance of ETH in 3Q26 is viewed as a prelude to a potentially stronger up move in the 4th quarter of 2026,” Lee continued. “Given that institutions have underweighted crypto in 2026, partially due to the outperformance of AI stocks in early 2026, we expect institutions to substantially increase their exposure in the final 3 months of 2026. We believe this could add meaningful upside to the gains seen since June 30.”
As of September 20, Bitmine additionally maintains 212 BTC valued at $18.1 million, a $105 million equity stake in Eightco Holdings, a $180 million position in Beast Industries, alongside liquid cash and marketable securities totaling $714 million, according to the report.
The company’s Ether holdings account for over 4.9% of the circulating Ethereum supply, which presently stands near 122.1 million ETH according to data from The Block’s ether price tracker. Bitmine has now completed 98% of its journey toward the “Alchemy of 5%” supply objective within a 15-month span since initiating its Ethereum treasury program.
Concurrently, Bitmine’s aggregate staked Ethereum amounts to 5,067,309 ETH, valued at $13.8 billion per the organization. “Bitmine has staked more ETH than other entities in the world. At scale (when Bitmine’s ETH is fully staked by MAVAN and its staking partners), the projected ETH staking reward would be $421 million on an annualized basis,” Lee explained. “Annualized staking revenues are now projected at $357 million. And this 5.1 million ETH is 85% of the 5.98 million ETH held by Bitmine. Bitmine’s own staking operations generated a 7-day yield of 2.62% (annualized).”
DAT race
Bitmine preserves its status as the premier Ethereum treasury owner, succeeded by Joe Lubin’s Sharplink and The Ether Machine, which command roughly 888,938 ETH and 496,712 ETH respectively, derived from SER metrics.
Additionally, Bitmine remains the second-largest public digital asset treasury entity overall, trailing Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which commands 846,000 BTC worth $71.9 billion following its newest weekly accumulation also publicized on Monday—representing past 4% of the ultimate 21 million bitcoin supply limit.
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-09-21-crypto-bull-market-underway-tom-lee-says-bitmine-nears-5-ethereum-supply-target-with-27562-eth-buy-415923.
