BitMine to Stop Buying Ether at 5% Supply Cap, Tom Lee Says

Published October 7, 2026, 13:45 UTC. Based on chairman Tom Lee's keynote remarks at TOKEN2049 Singapore on October 7, 2026, reported by CoinDesk and Cointelegraph.

Ether is about to lose its most persistent buyer. BitMine Immersion Technologies, the Ethereum-focused digital asset treasury company trading under the ticker BMNR, will stop accumulating ETH once its holdings reach 5% of the token's circulating supply, chairman Tom Lee said on Wednesday during a keynote at TOKEN2049 in Singapore.

"That's a hard cap. We're not gonna be accumulating past 5%," Lee told the audience, according to Cointelegraph. "We're not gonna own more than 5% of Ethereum." Lee said the company needs to buy roughly another 100,000 ETH to reach the self-imposed ceiling.

100,000 ETH from the ceiling

BitMine is already nearly there. In its latest weekly update, issued Monday, the company said it bought another $41 million in ETH last week, bringing its holdings to 6,016,414 ETH, or roughly 4.9% of the 122.1 million tokens in circulation, CoinDesk reported. At Ether's Wednesday price of about $2,580, that stack is worth approximately $15.5 billion.

At last week's buying pace, adding the remaining 100,000 ETH would take about six to seven weeks, assuming the company keeps accumulating at roughly the same rate, CoinDesk said. The firm held $643 million in cash and marketable securities that it could use for further purchases, according to the Monday update, more than twice what it would need to buy the rest at current prices.

Lee noted the speed of the accumulation surprised even the company. "We thought this would take five years," he said. "It took us a little over a year."

The end of a year of weekly buying

BitMine says it has bought ETH every week since launching its ether treasury strategy in June 2025, giving Ether an unusually steady source of spot demand through more than 60 consecutive weeks. Lee said the company built most of its position while prices were depressed. "We did all this buying in a bear market," he said on stage, adding that the company protected the downside for ETH by buying.

The looming end of those purchases lands while Ether trades lower. Ether fell about 3.5% to around $2,570 on Wednesday as Bitcoin slid below $84,000 amid a risk-off move across markets, according to CoinDesk.

No more capital raises, but staking complicates the cap

Lee tied the 5% ceiling to the company's capital strategy. BitMine has tapped capital markets aggressively to build its treasury, including a $300 million perpetual preferred stock offering launched in June, according to Cointelegraph. Once the buying stops, Lee said, the company no longer needs to raise additional funds to keep accumulating.

Staking could still push the company's share of supply upward after purchases end. In an August interview with Bankless, Lee said the company could sell the ETH it earns through staking to prevent its share of the supply from rising above 5%, Cointelegraph reported. He also left the door open to revisiting the limit: in that interview he said the company may reconsider accumulating beyond 5% in 2027, depending on how Ethereum adoption develops.

This article is news reporting and is not investment advice.

Sources

• Tom Lee, BitMine chairman, keynote remarks at TOKEN2049 Singapore (Oct. 7, 2026), primary source
• BitMine Immersion Technologies, weekly holdings update (Oct. 5, 2026), primary source
• CoinDesk, Ethereum news: Tom Lee says Bitmine to soon stop buying ETH (Oct. 7, 2026), secondary source
• Cointelegraph, BitMine Sets 5% Ether Supply Hard Cap as Target Nears (Oct. 7, 2026), secondary source