BitMine is now $484 million away from completing its 5% Ethereum target

BitMine would now need to spend just $482 million more to complete its goal of owning 5% of Ethereum’s total supply, though management is signaling that the final purchases will come more slowly.

On July 20, the company revealed that it held 5,777,468 ETH after adding 7,430 tokens during the previous week. The latest purchase cost about $14 million, making it one of BitMine’s smallest weekly allocations to ETH.

Based on BitMine’s estimate of 120.7 million ETH in circulation, a 5% position would equal 6.035 million tokens, leaving the company 257,532 ETH short of its target.

That remaining ETH would cost about $483.9 million at the $1,879 price BitMine used to value its holdings. The dollar requirement will fluctuate with ETH’s market price, while the number of tokens needed could also change as Ethereum’s supply expands or contracts.

BMNR buyback takes priority over ETH purchases

The ETH purchase slowdown came as BitMine spent almost six times as much buying its own shares.

According to its press statement, BitMine repurchased about 5.5 million BMNR common shares during the week at an average price of $15.6156, putting the transaction’s value at roughly $85.9 million. Combined with its ether purchase, the company deployed close to $100 million across the two assets.

The repurchase was conducted under a previously authorized $4 billion program. Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee said the smaller ETH purchase reflected the decision to allocate capital to BitMine’s stock, which management regarded as beneficial to shareholders.

The company nevertheless continued a record of buying ETH every week since starting the strategy on June 30, 2025.

The pace has dropped sharply from the preceding week, when BitMine bought 27,801 ETH. Its latest addition was about 73% smaller and followed purchases totaling nearly 70,000 ETH during the first two weekly reporting periods of July.

Still, this change is consistent with guidance Lee gave in his July chairman’s message. He said BitMine intended to approach the 5% level gradually and did not plan to accelerate beyond that concentration threshold.

Lee cited changes taking place around the Ethereum Foundation and said the company wanted to avoid building a position substantially larger than 5% of the network’s supply.

The target is therefore becoming a ceiling as well as a milestone. BitMine has completed about 95.7% of the required accumulation when measured by tokens, leaving less than one-quarter of a percentage point of Ethereum’s estimated supply to acquire.

Rapid expansion in BitMine’s share count

The decision to repurchase shares also follows a period in which BitMine issued large amounts of equity to finance its ETH purchases.

The number of common shares outstanding has more than 579.7 million as of May 31, compared with 232.4 million at the end of August 2025, according to the company’s latest quarterly filing. That means the share count has more than doubled over the past year to fund its aggressive ETH purchases.

The 5.5 million-share repurchase reverses only a small portion of that expansion. Still, it indicates that management is now weighing the market price of BitMine stock against the value of adding more ether.

BitMine said its combined cryptocurrency, cash, marketable securities and strategic investments were valued at $11.5 billion as of July 19.