Bitmine Is 187,000 ETH Away From Owning 5% of All Ethereum, And It Just Got a Lot Closer

In the latest Ethereum news today, Bitmine is 187,000 ETH away from owning 5% of the entire Ethereum supply, and last week’s buy closed the gap fast.

The company acquired another 32,447 ETH last week, a purchase worth roughly $81 million, pushing total holdings to 5,847,611 ETH valued at around $15 billion as of August 23.

That leaves Bitmine roughly 187,000 ETH short of its self-imposed target of 5% of Ethereum’s supply, which equals roughly 6.04 million ETH against Ethereum’s approximately 120.7 million token total.

The timing lines up with a strong market. ETH is up 31.5% over 7 days, versus Bitcoin’s nearly 24% gain over the same period.

The accumulation is not sitting idle either. 87% of Bitmine’s ETH, 5,067,309 tokens, is staked, with the company projecting $330 million in annual staking revenue.

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Ethereum News Today: ETH’s Outperformance Drives the Timing

The purchase comes as Ethereum posted its largest weekly gain in more than a year, rising roughly 31% since August 19. ETH is currently trading just under $2,500, up almost 3% on the day, and that move has flipped sentiment on prediction markets: Myriad traders now price 64% odds that ETH hits $3,000 before dropping to $1,500, a reversal from bearish odds as high as 74% less than a week earlier.

Bitmine’s accumulation campaign began last summer, when the firm reached roughly 1% of Ethereum’s supply that August and 2% by September. Holdings passed 4.66 million ETH in March 2026 and 5.2 million in May, tracking a steady if uneven buying pace that Chairman Tom Lee said would slow to avoid crossing the 5% threshold too quickly.

That pace didn’t stay slow – by late July, the company’s stack had already climbed to 5.79 million ETH.

The renewed institutional bid lines up with broader ETF demand data. Ethereum ETF inflows have also picked up in recent sessions, reinforcing the same risk-on rotation into ETH that Bitmine’s buying reflects.

“This is the largest weekly gain since May 2025, prior to that it was July 2021. In those two precedent instances, this weekly gain of >30% signaled a launch point for a larger move in ETH.”

Tom Lee, Chairman of Bitmine, made that comparison in a statement on Monday. He pointed to easing financial conditions, White House support for crypto, and Treasury purchases of long-term bonds as factors improving investor appetite for risk, a framing that treats the current rally as structurally similar to prior breakouts rather than a one-off spike.

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What Crossing 5% Would and Wouldn’t Change

Hitting the 5% mark is Bitmine’s own target, not a protocol-level threshold. Crossing it would not trigger any change to Ethereum itself or grant Bitmine control over transactions, upgrades, or governance; the company would simply hold a larger, more concentrated position in an asset it already stakes at an 87% rate.

For BMNR shareholders, that concentration cuts both ways. More ETH at 5% means more staking revenue if Ethereum performs well, but also greater exposure to falling prices, custody failures, financing costs, and regulatory shifts if it doesn’t.

Bitmine has not said whether it plans to stop buying once it reaches the threshold, leaving the pace of future purchases as the open variable heading into the next disclosure cycle.

Whether ETH’s current strength holds may hinge on the same thesis driving Bitmine’s buying: institutional capital rotating into Ethereum ahead of broader adoption narratives, a case laid out in recent commentary on Ethereum’s positioning for 2026.

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