Bitmine spends more on buybacks than ETH as 5% goal nears

Tom Lee's Bitmine spent nearly twice as much buying back its own shares last week as it did on ether. The largest Ethereum treasury company repurchased 2.04 million shares at an average of $22.48, about $45.9 million, while adding 10,452 ETH worth roughly $24.5 million, down from 12,535 ETH a week earlier, CoinDesk reports.

The numbers

• Holdings: 6,051,933 ETH, or 4.95% of ether's 122.2 million supply, about 58,000 ETH short of its 5% target (it was already 99% of the way there a week ago).
• Buybacks: the first since Aug. 17; this year's total is now 22.9 million shares for about $399.6 million, Decrypt reports.
• Staking: 5,227,037 ETH (86%) is staked, which Bitmine projects will earn about $318 million a year at current yields.
• Other assets: 215 BTC, $514 million in cash and securities and stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco, for $15 billion in total holdings as of Oct. 25.

Our take: the accumulation phase is ending

The interesting part is not the ETH, it is the buyback. A treasury company's stock is supposed to trade at a premium to the crypto it holds; when it doesn't, issuing new shares to buy coins stops adding value per share, and buying back cheap stock becomes the more "accretive" move, which is the word Bitmine uses. Strategy made the same choice this week, skipping bitcoin entirely to repurchase $205 million of preferred stock.

With the 5% line almost reached and Lee saying the firm will stop buying there, Bitmine is shifting from an accumulator to something closer to a yield fund: a large staked ETH position plus capital returned to shareholders. Lee frames it bullishly, noting ETH is down 13% from its recent peak while US chip stocks fell 20%. But for ether's market, the practical point is that one of its steadiest buyers of 2026 is close to done. Our explainer on what a crypto treasury company is covers why that premium matters, and how staking works explains where the $318 million estimate comes from.