BitMineกำลังจะถือETH 5% ความเสี่ยงหรือโอกาสดี?

Original author: Xiaobing

As of August 24, BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR) holds 5,847,611 ETH, worth approximately $14.3 billion, accounting for 4.84% of the total Ethereum supply. It is still about 187,000 ETH short of the company's self-imposed 5% target (approximately 6.04 million ETH). At the recent weekly purchase rate of 32,447 ETH, this goal can be achieved within about six weeks.

BitMine's chairman is Tom Lee, one of Wall Street's most well-known crypto bulls and co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors. He calls this goal the "Alchemy of 5%." Since launching the Ethereum treasury strategy on June 30, 2025, BitMine has bought ETH every single week without a single interruption.

A publicly listed company is about to become one of the largest single token holders — and the largest staker — of the world's second-largest blockchain network.

From Mining Rig Cooling to ETH Whale

BitMine was originally a small company specializing in immersion-cooled mining equipment. In early 2025, after Tom Lee took over, the company completed a radical strategic transformation: from selling mining equipment to accumulating Ethereum.

The growth pace has been extremely rapid.

In August 2025, holdings reached 1% of ETH supply, and by September, 2%. In September of that year, the company raised $365 million through a secondary offering at $70 per share. In March 2026, holdings surpassed 4.66 million ETH, and in May, exceeded 5.2 million. In June 2026, the company raised another $274 million by issuing 9.5% annual dividend preferred shares (ticker: BMNP) at a price of $80 per share. Investors include ARK Invest (Cathie Wood), Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Kraken, and Galaxy Digital.

On June 26, 2026, BitMine was added to the Russell 1000 large-cap index.

Beyond ETH, BitMine also holds 210 Bitcoin, a $180 million equity stake in MrBeast's Beast Industries, an $89 million equity stake in Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: ORBS), and approximately $308 million in cash and marketable securities. The company classifies Beast and Eightco as "moonshot investments," with total assets of approximately $14.9 billion.

The Largest Staker

BitMine doesn't just accumulate coins. It has staked its ETH holdings on a massive scale to the Ethereum network.

As of August 23, BitMine has staked 5,067,309 ETH, approximately 87% of its total holdings, worth about $12.4 billion. The company has built its own staking platform called MAVAN, initially serving its own assets, with plans to open it to institutional investors and custodians in the future. Based on BitMine's disclosed 2.61% seven-day annualized yield, staking generates approximately $287 million in annualized income.

Putting this figure in the context of the entire Ethereum network: the total staked amount on Ethereum is currently around 42 million ETH, representing 34% of the total supply. BitMine's 5.07 million staked ETH accounts for about 12% of the total network stake. Lido is currently the largest staking service provider, holding approximately 8.83 million staked ETH, representing 20.9% of the staking market. BitMine alone, as a single company, has reached a staking scale equivalent to 57% of Lido's.

Tom Lee proudly stated that BitMine stakes more ETH than any other entity in the world.

What Does 5% Mean?

Owning 5% of ETH does not give BitMine any direct control over the Ethereum network. Ethereum's protocol upgrades are determined through the EIP process and rough consensus among core developers, unaffected by token holdings. Owning ETH also does not equate to voting rights. Ethereum has no on-chain governance mechanism.

But a 12% share of the network's staked supply is not a number that can be ignored.

Ethereum's PoS consensus relies on a broad distribution of validators to maintain network security and censorship resistance. The community has already raised significant concerns about Lido's 20% staking share, arguing that excessive concentration by a single entity could trigger systemic risks. BitMine's 12% staking share, combined with the fact that it is a publicly listed company subject to U.S. securities laws, means its staking activities may be influenced by the SEC, CFTC, or other regulatory bodies.

Consider an extreme scenario: if the U.S. government were to impose sanctions or compliance requirements on Ethereum (similar to OFAC's sanctions on Tornado Cash), BitMine, as a public company, must comply. The 5.07 million staked ETH it controls represents 12% of the network's consensus weight. If a single company is forced to change its validation behavior due to regulatory pressure, the impact is not limited to that company — it affects the neutrality of the entire network.

This is not a purely theoretical concern. In August 2026, Lido publicly diverged from Ethereum core developers over EIP-8363 (a proposal affecting staking rewards). When a staking participant becomes large enough, it is no longer just a passive stakeholder, but a power node in protocol politics.

Two Sides of the Investment Narrative

The investment narrative for BitMine can be understood from two completely opposite directions.

The bullish logic chain is: ETH's current price is well below BitMine's average purchase price. If the fundamentals of the Ethereum ecosystem improve (accelerated RWA tokenization, increased L2 activity, rising ETH ETF inflows), and ETH recovers above $4,000, BitMine's unrealized losses will quickly turn into profits. Meanwhile, the $287 million in annualized staking income provides a cash flow floor. After the company's inclusion in the Russell 1000, passive index fund buying will continue to support the stock price, and the stock's current NAV discount provides a margin of safety.

The bearish logic chain is equally clear: ETH's relative weakness is not a short-term fluctuation, but rather reflects the market re-pricing Ethereum's role in the AI era. BitMine's entire investment thesis rests on the single judgment that "ETH should be more expensive." If ETH trades sideways in the $2,000–$3,000 range for an extended period, the $9.1 billion unrealized loss will not disappear, the 9.5% preferred share dividends must continue to be paid, and the staking yield (2.6%) is far from sufficient to cover financing costs.

The company has no meaningful source of revenue outside of ETH. This is a leveraged bet with all chips on a single asset, not an operating business with diversified revenue streams.

In a statement on August 24, Tom Lee noted that ETH has risen 30% over the past week, its largest weekly gain since May 2025, and that historically, weekly gains of similar magnitude have often marked the starting point of larger rallies.

Only 187,000 ETH remains to reach 5%, worth approximately $460 million at current prices. For a company that buys every week, this figure could be crossed before the end of the year. By then, the crypto industry will face an unprecedented situation: a NYSE-listed company holding more than 5% of the token supply of the world's second-largest blockchain, staking 12% of the network's consensus weight, while still potentially carrying billions of dollars in unrealized losses on its books.

Whether the "Alchemy of 5%" can turn base metal into gold depends entirely on the price direction of ETH.