Bitmine adds 9,587 ETH as Tom Lee calls Buterin's 'ETH is money' a seismic shift
In brief
- Bitmine added 9,587 ETH worth roughly $20 million, extending its weekly buying streak.
- Bitmine's holdings reached 6,070,092 ETH, or 4.97% of Ethereum's 122.2 million token supply.
- Bitmine says it is 99% of the way to its 'Alchemy of 5%' ownership goal.
- About 86% of Bitmine's ETH is staked through MAVAN, projecting roughly $359 million a year.
- Tom Lee, Bitmine's chairman, called Buterin's Devcon 'ETH is money' remarks 'a seismic shift.'
Closing in on 5%
By its own count, Bitmine is 99% of the way to its 5% ownership goal, a target it calls the "Alchemy of 5%." The firm has bought ETH every week since it launched its treasury strategy on June 30, 2025.
The streak's still intact.
Most of that stack isn't sitting idle. Bitmine said 5,227,037 ETH (roughly 86% of its holdings) is staked through its MAVAN platform, with projected annualized staking revenue of about $359 million. Total holdings stood at $14.3 billion as of Nov. 8, per the release, including 216 Bitcoin and $475 million in cash and marketable securities. It also holds a $180 million stake in Beast Industries and a $75 million position in Eightco Holdings, which Bitmine describes as a public proxy for indirect OpenAI exposure.
According to the release, Bitmine is still the world's largest Ethereum treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury overall. Only Michael Saylor's Strategy is bigger (the release said it holds about 849,327 BTC).
Lee leans on Buterin's Devcon remarks
At the Devcon conference in Mumbai, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said he'd made up his mind about what ETH is.
“I’ve finally made up my mind, ETH is a store of value, ETH is money.”
Buterin later expanded on that in an X post, saying fee-burning is weaker than it once seemed and that optimizing for it can conflict with decentralization.
Lee ran with it. He called the declaration "a seismic shift," arguing it clarifies how ETH will capture value in what he described as a coming "supercycle of tokenization and AI." In his view, ETH works as "pristine and trusted collateral" rather than as a cash-flow token. That's Lee's framing, not Buterin's, and it comes from the chairman of a company holding nearly 5% of the supply.
Decrypt, which reported the figures, discloses that Tom Lee is one of several investors in Dastan, Decrypt's parent company.
Frequently asked questions
What is Bitmine's 'Alchemy of 5%' goal?
The 'Alchemy of 5%' is Bitmine's target of owning 5% of Ethereum's token supply. Its 6,070,092 ETH equals 4.97% of the 122.2 million supply, which Bitmine counts as 99% of the way to that goal, according to Decrypt.
How much of Bitmine's ETH is staked?
Bitmine said 5,227,037 ETH, roughly 86% of its holdings, is staked through its MAVAN platform. The company projects annualized staking revenue of about $359 million from that position.
