Bitmine Buys $52M ETH, Tom Lee Says Fundamentals Strong

Bitmine Immersion Technologies has purchased another $52 million worth of Ether (ETH), with its chair, Tom Lee, saying that the token’s price isn’t yet reflecting the Ethereum blockchain’s strengths.

“Over the past week, we acquired 26,497 ETH,” Lee said in a statement on Monday. “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 the largest Ether treasury company with 5.4 million ETH worth more than $10.5 billion. It had slowed its pace of buying earlier this month after scooping up more than 100,000 Ether a week for three straight weeks.

Ether is down 4.7% over the past week and has traded between $1,963 and $2,126, according to CoinGecko. It has traded mostly flat over the past day at just below $2,000.

Lee told CNBC on Monday that there is disappointment in crypto at the moment because it hasn’t moved while other sectors like software are rallying, but argued that it “always happens at the end of crypto winter.”

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Lee argued that the thesis for Bitcoin and Ethereum that he believes in still stands; that they are likely to be the future of money, despite the short-term price downturn across the market and some long-term holders and whales selling.

“As AI systems evolve, we’re now talking about using commerce and operating websites, you need decentralized identity and verification, and that’s really what crypto does,” he said. 

“We know Wall Street wants to go toward tokenization; it’s a vast improvement in efficiency of how money actually moves, and it’s an innovation. That only happens on Bitcoin, Ethereum and other smart contracts. The future isn’t changed.”  

Bitmine announced plans to build an Ether treasury in July 2025, aiming to hold 5% of the total circulating supply of 120.6 million tokens. Its current stash holds over 5.4 million tokens, roughly 90% to its target. Lee has said he expects the company to hit its goal sometime in 2026.

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