Ethereum Price Hits 6-Week High as Tom Lee's BitMine Reveals Latest ETH Buy

In brief

• Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies added another $138 million worth of ETH last week.
• The firm’s purchase comes as BitMine Chairman Tom Lee thinks the crypto winter is ending soon.
• Shares of BMNR are up around 10% as ETH has jumped more than 8% in the last 24 hours.

Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) stepped up its ETH purchases, acquiring 60,999 ETH or $138 million worth in the last week as Ethereum climbed to its highest price in nearly six weeks.  Jumping 9% in the last 24 hours, ETH was recently changing hands around $2,288, making BitMine’s stash of 4,595,562 ETH worth more than $10.5 billion at the time of writing. ETH reached a daily peak of $2,301 earlier Monday. "BitMine has slightly increased the pace of ETH buys in each of the past two weeks, as our base case is ETH is in the final stages of the 'mini-crypto winter,’” said BitMine Chairman Tom Lee in a statement.

Last week the firm similarly added around 61,000 ETH, but prior to that period, it had averaged around 45,000-50,000 ETH in weekly acquisitions. Its recent purchases track with the second-largest crypto asset’s outperformance when compared to traditional indices like the S&P 500.   "Since the start of the Iran war, crypto prices have outperformed and Ethereum has outperformed the S&P 500 by 2,450bp (24.5%),” said Lee. “This is a meaningful outperformance in a mere two weeks.”  During that outperformance, BitMine’s relentless pursuit of Ethereum has led the firm to different acquisition methods, including the purchase of 5,000 ETH or about $10.2 million worth of ETH purchased directly from the Ethereum Foundation. That purchase was disclosed on Saturday, with the tally included in the weekly total announced on Monday.

Alongside its acquisition, the firm also added to its quantity of staked ETH as its own staking platform—Made in America Validator Network (MAVAN)—is still on track to launch by the end of Q1. BitMine is now staking 3,040,515 ETH, about $6.9 billion worth and 66% of its entire supply, making its annualized staking revenue around $180 million at its current rate.  “BitMine has staked more ETH than other entities in the world,” said Lee, adding that when its entire stack is staked, the firm expects rewards to be about $272 million annually using its 7-day yield rate of 2.81%.  In a busy week for BMNR, Lee also joined the board of directors at Eightco (ORBS), an AI and blockchain firm that manages a Worldcoin treasury. BitMine, which had previously invested in the firm as part of its “moonshots” portfolio, announced that it invested another $75 million in Eightco last week. It now holds an $83 million stake in Eightco as well as $1.2 billion in cash.  Shares of BMNR are up more than 11% on Monday, recently changing hands around $22.89. Even so, the stock has dropped 59% in the last six months as ETH remains nearly 54% off its all-time high of $4,946 set last August. The rising price of Ethereum has chipped away at BitMine’s unrealized losses on its ETH holdings, which currently sit around $6.5 billion per data from DropsTab, based on its disclosed cost basis through November and estimates for purchases since then.