Bitmine Crosses 6 Million ETH Then Caps the Bid

Bitmine Immersion Technologies now holds 6,016,414 ether after another weekly purchase, and chairman Tom Lee has put a firm ceiling on the rest of the bid. The Norwalk, Connecticut company, ticker BMNR on the NYSE, is 4.9% of Ethereum’s 122.1 million supply and 99% of the way to the 5% target it calls the Alchemy of 5%.

The pile first printed above 6 million on September 28. The newer fact is that Lee told Token2049 in Singapore on October 7 the buying stops at 5%, after which Bitmine becomes a staking shop instead of a standing bid.

Fifteen Months of Unbroken Weekly ETH Buys

As of 6:30 p.m. ET on October 4, Bitmine reported 6,016,414 ETH as of October 4 at $2,726 a coin on Coinbase, or about $16.4 billion. It added 15,112 ETH in that week, about $41 million at the same print, after 17,362 ETH the week before had taken the book to 6,001,302.

Lee said the company has bought ether each and every week since the ETH treasury strategy started on June 30, 2025. The October 5 release called that run unmatched by any public company, and it put the whole stack, cash, and side bets at $17.4 billion, including 214 bitcoin, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, a $117 million stake in Eightco Holdings, and $643 million in cash and marketable securities.

THE ACCUMULATION CALENDAR

1. June 30, 2025: Bitmine starts the ETH treasury strategy and begins buying every week.
2. March 2026: The company launches MAVAN, the Made in America Validator Network, for its own coins and later for outside clients.
3. June 26, 2026: BMNR is added to the Russell 1000 large-cap index.
4. August 9, 2026: Staked ETH reaches 5,067,309 and then stops rising in the weekly scoreboard.
5. September 28, 2026: A 17,362 ETH buy lifts holdings through 6,001,302.
6. October 4, 2026: A 15,112 ETH buy takes the book to 6,016,414, valued at $16.4 billion.
7. October 7, 2026: Lee tells Token2049 the 5% line is a hard cap and the stacking will stop.

The weekly clips have been shrinking into the autumn. 15,112 ETH was a smaller ticket than 17,362, which was already smaller than the 27,562 ETH buy disclosed for the week of September 21, so the bid was cooling before Lee said it would end.

Tom Lee Calls 5% a Hard Cap

On the Token2049 main stage on October 7, Lee said Bitmine needs about 100,000 more ETH to reach 5% of supply and then will stop. He had thought the build would take five years. It took a little over a year, he said, and it was done in a bear market.

That’s a hard cap. We’re not gonna be accumulating past 5%. We’re not gonna own more than 5% of Ethereum.

Tom Lee, chairman of Bitmine Immersion Technologies, Token2049, Singapore, October 7, 2026

He tied the ceiling to shareholder math. If the firm is done raising capital to buy more coins, he argued, BMNR can beat ETH on the way up because the share count no longer has to fund the bid. After the cap, Bitmine plans to keep the stake running and sell the rewards so the treasury does not drift above 5%.

Five percent of the 122.1 million supply Bitmine used on October 5 is 6,105,000 ETH, which leaves 88,586 coins from the 6,016,414 already on the books. Lee’s “about 100,000” is the round figure he used on stage. At the 15,112 pace, even his larger gap is about six to seven weeks of buying, and then the standing bid is gone.

The October chairman’s message on the cap is the written version of that Singapore talk, filed with an 8-K the same day. In August he had left the door cracked for a 2027 review if Ethereum adoption jumped. On October 7 he closed it.

Most of the Pile Is Already Staked

The part of the book that pays a coupon is already almost as large as the headline stack, and it has not moved in two months. Bitmine’s own weekly table shows staked ETH at 5,067,309 from August 9 through October 4, even as the treasury kept climbing. That leaves 949,105 ETH unstaked.

THE STAKING BOOK ON OCTOBER 4

• Coins locked: 5,067,309 ETH, about $13.8 billion at $2,726, or 84% of the treasury.
• Seven-day yield: 2.63% annualized on Bitmine’s own operations.
• Run-rate now: $363 million a year on the coins already staked.
• If the rest is staked: $431 million a year at the same 2.63% on the full 6,016,414.

Lee said Bitmine has staked more ETH than other entities in the world. That claim sits beside a bigger pool: Lido still runs 8.47 million ETH and 19.13% of the stake on beaconcha.in, spread across many node operators. Bitmine is a single corporate stack, and it is already larger than most named exchange and custodian books. MAVAN was built for Bitmine’s own coins and is now offered to institutions, custodians, and partners. An October 7 8-K summary of the chairman’s message put other people’s crypto on MAVAN at $2 billion and described staking rewards at about $1 million a day, which is the $363 million annual figure expressed as a daily round number.

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As of October 5, 2026, Bitmine total staked ETH stands at 5,067,309 13.8 billion at $2,726 per ETH). "Bitmine has staked more ETH than other entities in the world. At scale (when Bitmine's ETH is fully staked by MAVAN and its staking partners),

➡️the projected ETH staking… pic.twitter.com/fmn3sBD5xS

— Bitmine (NYSE-BMNR) $ETH $BMNP (@BitMNR) October 5, 2026

The coupon is already the operating business. For the quarter ended May 31, staking and validation brought in $45.7 million, or 98% of $46.5 million in total revenue, up from $2.05 million a year earlier when the firm was still mostly a miner and host. Projected yield is not cash in the bank, and a 2.63% seven-day print can move with the validator set, but the income statement has already flipped.

How Close Is Bitmine to 5% of Ethereum?

Bitmine’s own supply denominator is 122.1 million ETH. Against that yardstick the October 4 book is 4.9% of the network and 99% of the Alchemy of 5% goal, 15 months after the first weekly buy.

THE LAST MILES TO 5%

Lee framed the 15-month sprint as proof the company could keep buying through a down tape. In the first nine months of 2026, he said, ETH fell 10% while BMNR fell 3%, a 731 basis-point gap, and in the third quarter ETH beat the S&P 500 by 6,832 basis points. Those comparisons are his, using his windows. They sit next to a simpler fact: once the remaining 88,586 to 100,000 coins are in, the strategy as written has no more ETH to buy.

SharpLink and the Rest Sit Far Behind

No other listed ether treasury is close. DefiLlama’s Ethereum treasury table shows 8.04 million ETH across 24 institutions, 6.582% of circulating supply, worth $20.099 billion on that board. Bitmine is most of that pile.

LISTED ETH TREASURIES ON DEFILLAMA

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Bitmine’s 6,016,414 ETH is 6.77 times SharpLink’s 888,938. The rest of the public-company field is a rounding error beside the Norwalk book. Bitmine also calls itself the No. 2 crypto treasury of any kind, behind Strategy, which the October 5 release said held 847,666 bitcoin. Backers named in that release include ARK’s Cathie Wood, Founders Fund, Bill Miller III, Pantera, Kraken, DCG, Galaxy Digital, MOZAYYX, and Lee himself.

Fundstrat data cited in the same release put BMNR’s five-day average dollar volume at $827 million as of October 2, rank 125 among 5,704 U.S.-listed stocks. The shares were widely held as a proxy for the weekly bid. That is the audience that heard Lee say the bid has an end date.

What Changes When the Weekly Bid Ends

The market had been treating Bitmine as a standing order in ether. Ending that order does not mean a sale of the 6,016,414 coins. It does mean the one public company that bought every week since June 30, 2025, steps away, while Strategy-style bitcoin treasuries still present themselves as perpetual buyers.

AFTER THE 5% LINE

• The spot bid: Weekly open-market ETH purchases stop once the book hits 5% of supply.
• The share printer: Lee said Bitmine is done raising capital to buy more ether, which is the flywheel that funded the 15-month sprint.
• The coupon: Staking rewards are to be sold as needed so holdings do not drift above 5%.
• The remaining business: MAVAN, outside staking clients, and the $363 million run-rate on coins already locked.

That is a different company from the one that posted 15,112 more coins every Monday. Without a capital raise tied to more ETH, BMNR starts to trade as a closed pool of ether plus a staking coupon, with a 9.5% preferred stock sitting on top of the common. The objection writes itself: there is no amplification left if the stack cannot grow. Lee’s answer is that a hard cap is how you stop dilution and let the equity beat the token. Both things can be true at once. Ether loses a buyer, and BMNR holders stop funding that buyer.

Around the late-September 6 million print, BMNR changed hands near $27. After the Token2049 cap remarks it was nearer $24. The October 5 release still described a crypto bull market underway and institutions as underweight into year-end. The stock that week was already pricing a smaller bid.

Buybacks, Preferred Stock and a Staking Coupon

Lee has been trying to make the equity do something other than track ETH one-for-one. The October 5 release said Bitmine executed what it called the largest crypto-treasury equity buyback, taking in 21 million shares in 2026. The October 7 8-K put that repurchase at $350 million, about $16.67 a share, and said the program was complete. Series A perpetual preferred stock, ticker BMNP, pays a 9.50% coupon weekly; the same filing said it was up 24% from an $80 issue price and yielded 9.56%.

Those tools only work if the ETH book holds and the validators keep paying. Most of the 5,067,309 staked coins have been sitting at that exact total since August 9, so the $363 million run-rate is a frozen machine, not a growing one. Turning on the remaining 949,105 ETH would, on Bitmine’s 2.63% math, be the path from $363 million toward $431 million. Until those coins are actually locked, the extra $68 million is a slide in a deck.

Lee still talks as if the cycle is in front of him, not behind. He told the Singapore room the stacking was finished in a bear market and that the firm was “done stacking in front of a 25X move.” The book that has to live through that move is 6,016,414 ETH, 4.9% of supply, with about 100,000 coins of buying left and a validator network that has not added a staked coin in eight weekly reports. After that, Bitmine is no longer the bid. It is the stack.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Bitmine Immersion Technologies, its ETH treasury, and related securities, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, a solicitation to buy or sell BMNR, BMNP, ether, bitcoin, or any other digital asset, and it is not a recommendation of any staking product. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser or other qualified professional who can consider their own objectives and risk limits before acting. Holdings, prices, yields, and company targets reflect the cited releases and trackers as of the dates named and can change with the market and with later filings.