Tom Lee: Bitmine will stop buying after ETH circulation reaches 5%

Tom Lee, Chairman of the Ethereum vault company Bitmine, stated on Wednesday at TOKEN2049 in Singapore that the company will stop buying once its holdings reach 5% of the circulating supply of ETH, and he emphasized that it should stop now. He mentioned that buying approximately 100,000 more ETH would reach this ratio, which he initially thought would take five years but actually took just over a year, and it was completed during a bear market.

Bitmine updated on Monday that it purchased approximately 41 million dollars worth of ETH last week, increasing its holdings to 6,016,414 coins, which accounted for about 4.9% of the then circulating supply of 122.1 million coins. Based on Wednesday's price of about 2,580 dollars, the holdings are valued at approximately 15.5 billion dollars. The company's cash and securities amount to about 643 million dollars, which is more than twice the amount needed to reach the 5% threshold at that time.

Since launching its Ethereum vault strategy in June 2025, Bitmine has been buying ETH weekly. At the pace of last week's purchases, it would take about six to seven more weeks to buy approximately 100,000 more coins. CoinDesk cited DropsTab data stating that the unrealized losses on the related holdings are about 4.5 billion dollars. At that time, ETH was approximately 2,571.64 dollars, having dropped about 5% in the past 24 hours, marking the weakest performance since September 20; Bitcoin was around 83,500 dollars, and BMNR closed at about 26.20 dollars.