Bitmine Buys 12,535 More ETH and Now Holds 6.04 Million (4.9% of Supply): What It Means If You Own Ether

What Bitmine announced

The figures come from Bitmine's own press release (distributed on PR Newswire on October 19) and were reported the same day by The Block and Decrypt. Everything in the table is as of Sunday, October 18, 2026, 3:00 p.m. New York time, and values use a reference price of $2,365 per ETH taken from Coinbase.

Bitmine says it has bought ETH every week since it launched the strategy on June 30, 2025, and calls itself the number one Ethereum treasury and the number two crypto treasury in the world, behind Strategy, which the release says holds 848,250 BTC (about $74 billion). Our arithmetic on the headline purchase: 12,535 ETH at $2,365 is about $29.7 million, which matches the "$30 million" figure Decrypt used.

Why the buying is nearly over, and why that matters

Bitmine calls its target the "Alchemy of 5%": owning one in every twenty ETH. Five percent of 122.1 million ETH is 6.105 million ETH. Bitmine holds 6,041,481, so the gap is 63,519 ETH. At last week's pace of 12,535 ETH, that is about 5.07 weeks, which would put the finish around the end of November if the pace and the target do not change. Both can change: the company can raise its goal, slow down, or stop early, and none of that is a commitment from the release.

This matters for a simple reason. A buyer that purchases roughly $30 million of ETH every week, in every market, is a steady source of demand. On Binance, the ETH/USDT spot pair traded about $409 million in the last 24 hours, so a $30 million weekly purchase is around 7% of a single day of that one pair's volume. That is not a number that moves the price by itself, and Bitmine's buying did not stop ETH from falling from its September high. But a bid that disappears tends to change the tone of the market, which is why traders are watching the countdown.

Decrypt also notes that Bitmine is underwater on paper, because much of its ETH was bought last year at higher prices than today's. The release does not give an average cost, so we cannot say by how much.

What ETH has actually done

Using Binance daily candles, ETH/USDT closed at $2,408.01 on October 19 and traded at about $2,402 on October 20. Its highest daily price in the last 90 days was $2,807.34 on September 21, so the current price is about 14.4% below that peak (our arithmetic). The 90-day low was $1,822.06 on August 1, so ETH is still about 32% above it.

Tom Lee blamed the recent weakness on a broad pullback from risk: worries about AI funding and AI safety, tension between the United States and Iran, U.S. midterm-election nerves and higher global bond yields. He also pointed to selloffs in AI and chip stocks in Korea and Taiwan, where crypto is widely held, spilling over into digital assets. That is a view from a company that owns the asset and has a reason to be optimistic, so treat it as one opinion, not a forecast.

The staking part most headlines skip

Bitmine says 5,067,309 ETH, about 84% of its holdings, is staked through MAVAN, its own validator platform. At a 7-day yield of 2.58%, it projects about $369 million a year in staking rewards if all its ETH were staked, and about $309 million a year at the current staked amount. Our check: $369 million divided by 6,041,481 ETH at $2,365 gives 2.58%, so those numbers are consistent.

For ETH holders, two things follow. First, a large share of supply is locked in staking, which reduces what is available to sell quickly. Second, an entity holding 4.9% of supply and earning from it has a reason to keep it, which is the opposite of the "treasury company sells everything" story we saw this week with a Solana treasury firm. Both are facts about one company, not guarantees about the market.

How to act on this

Do not trade off a headline. A weekly purchase announcement is information about one company's plan, and the plan has a visible end date. If you want ETH exposure, decide the size first (an amount you can hold through a 10% swing without selling), then split your purchases over several days so one price does not decide your result. Check the cost before you trade: spot fees on Bitget are 0.1% maker and 0.1% taker, and with code nexu888 you get an automatic fee rebate through NexuAlpha. The Bitget profile shows how settlement works and our fee comparison lines it up against other venues. If you use leverage on ETH, look at the funding rate board first: Binance's ETH perpetual funding is around 0.0093% per eight hours right now, which is about 10% a year if it stayed there (our arithmetic: 0.0093% × 3 × 365).

Related reading in the news archive: we track treasury-company moves as they are reported, including Strategy's weekly purchases and the Solana treasury sale.

What we could not verify

We could not see Bitmine's average purchase price, so the size of its paper loss is not confirmed. We also could not confirm whether the company will keep buying after 5% or change the target, and the release does not say how the final purchases will be paced. All figures are as of October 18 unless stated, and ETH prices are Binance spot data fetched on October 20.

Quick answers

How much ETH does Bitmine hold? 6,041,481 ETH as of October 18, 2026, or 4.9% of supply, according to its October 19 release.

How much did it buy last week? 12,535 ETH, worth about $30 million at $2,365.

When will Bitmine stop buying? Tom Lee has said it will stop at 5% of supply. That is about 63,519 ETH away, or around five weekly purchases at the current pace, by our arithmetic.

Does Bitmine's buying set the ETH price? No. A $30 million weekly purchase is small next to daily trading volume, and ETH has fallen about 14% from its September high while Bitmine kept buying.

Is Bitmine's ETH staked? About 84% of it, 5,067,309 ETH, is staked on its MAVAN platform, according to the company.