BitMine Nears Its 5% Ethereum Buying Cap — What Could That Mean for ETH?

BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate holder of Ethereum (ETH), will halt purchases once its position reaches 5% of all ETH. On Wednesday, chairman Tom Lee told the Token2049 conference in Singapore that the firm is about 100,000 ETH away from that level.

The company began buying on June 30, 2025, when ETH was near $2,500. Fifteen months and 6 million tokens later, ETH trades at $2,581.

BitMine’s Progress Toward the 5% Target

As of October 4, BitMine’s holdings stood at 6,016,414 ETH, equal to about 4.9% of supply, the company reported. At the current ETH price, buying the remaining 89,000 ETH would cost about $230 million.

“We only need to get another 100,000 ETH to get to 5%,” Lee stated at the Token2049 in Singapore.

With purchases at an end, BitMine also no longer needs to raise money to fund them, Lee said. In June, BeInCrypto reported that Lee had signaled the aggressive buying was coming to an end.

BREAKING: Tom Lee says BitMine $BMNR will stop accumulating $ETH once it reaches 5% of Ethereum’s total supply.
BitMine currently holds 6,016,414 ETH, equal to roughly 4.9% of total supply.

— Crypto Rover (@cryptorover) October 7, 2026

The Scale of BitMine’s Influence on ETH Price

According to VanEck, BitMine added about 1.1 million ETH in August 2025, more than any other treasury company did that month. ETH gained 15.8% that month and peaked near $4,953.

VanEck linked the month’s $4 billion in Ethereum fund inflows to the stablecoin story and treasury-company buying.

BitMine kept buying every week through 2026. Even so, ETH fell below $2,000 by June, down 44% for the year at the time.

At that point, the 5.41 million ETH BitMine held were about $9 billion below what the company paid.

Fund flows have recently moved the other direction. US spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) lost about $408 million in six days, SoSoValue data show. That equals roughly 152,000 ETH, 10 times BitMine’s last weekly buy of 15,112.

BitMine’s share price has already outperformed ETH this year. The 5.07 million ETH it has staked will still earn about $363 million a year. The next weekly holdings update should show how quickly the final purchases arrive.