Bitcoinist
March 6, 2026 8:00 AM UTC

$52M Ethereum Bet Comes As Tom Lee Says ETH Isn’t Reflecting Its Potential

Bitmine is now holding more than 5.4 million Ether tokens, a stockpile worth over $10.5 billion, and that puts the company about 90% of the way toward its goal of controlling 5% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. The latest purchase landed at a time when ETH has been stuck near $2,000 and has failed to match the scale of the buying. A $52 Million Addition Tom Lee said Bitmine bought 26,497 ETH over the past week, adding another large block to a treasury strategy that has turned the company into the biggest Ether holder of its kind. The move came after Bitmine had already slowed its pace earlier this month, following a stretch in which it was buying more than 100,000 ETH a week for three straight weeks. The company first laid out its Ether treasury plan in July 2025, with a target of owning 5% of the total circulating supply, which CoinGecko-linked figures in the report put at 120.6 million tokens. Lee has said Bitmine expects to reach that mark in 2026, and the company’s current position suggests it is already deep into the climb. 3/“Over the past week, we acquired 26,497 ETH. In our view, ETH prices are not reflecting the strengthening of Ethereum fundamentals, but then again, this is not surprising given we are in the early stages of crypto spring. Bitmine is expected to reach the ‘alchemy of 5%’… — Bitmine (NYSE-BMNR) $ETH (@BitMNR) June 1, 2026 Price Still Trails The Buying Even with that scale of accumulation, Ethereum has been moving in the opposite direction. It was down 4.7% over the past week, trading between $1,963 and $2,126, and spent much of the last day hovering just under $2,000. Lee told CNBC on Monday that the crypto market has been stuck in a rough patch while other parts of the market, including software stocks, have rallied. He said that kind of frustration often shows up near the end of what he called crypto winter, when prices lag behind the story investors think should matter more. The case Lee is making is simple: Bitcoin and Ethereum still matter as the backbone of future money, even if the market is not rewarding that view right now. According to Bitmine, prices of Ether “are not reflecting the strengthening” of the coin’s fundamentals. “But then again, this is not surprising”, he said, considering the firm is in the early phases of crypto spring. Lee pointed to AI-driven commerce, decentralized identity, verification tools, and Wall Street’s push toward tokenization as examples of why he believes Ethereum’s role has not gone away. Betting On A Longer Clock Bitmine’s Ethereum buying streak shows how some companies are treating Ether less like a trade and more like a reserve asset. That makes the company’s moves easy to track, but harder to read in the short term, since the market has not yet given the buying spree a matching price response. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView