Bitmine Buys 10,399 More Ether, Raising Holdings to 5.79 Million ETH

Bitmine, the world’s largest corporate holder of Ether, bought 10,399 ETH over the past week, raising its total holdings to 5,797,813 ETH. That amounts to 4.8% of Ether’s circulating supply of 120.7 million tokens.

A PR Newswire release on Aug. 3 said Bitmine’s digital assets, cash, marketable securities and strategic investments totaled $11.3 billion. Those assets include 5.8 million ETH, 209 Bitcoin, $173 million in cash and marketable securities, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries and a $61 million stake in Aetco Holdings.

At an ETH price of $1,880, Bitmine’s Ether holdings are worth about $10.9 billion. The company has reached 96% of its goal of acquiring 5% of total ETH supply. It has bought Ether every week since launching its Ethereum treasury strategy on June 30 last year, according to the release.

Bitmine has staked 4,917,189 ETH, worth about $9.2 billion at $1,880 per token. That represents 85% of its total holdings. Its annualized return over the past seven days was 2.67%, implying about $247 million in annual staking income. If all of its Ether were staked, annual rewards would be about $291 million.

Chairman Tom Lee said ETH outperformed the Nasdaq 100 by 2,500 basis points, or 25 percentage points, last month. He added that it was the biggest monthly outperformance since July last year and a sign that crypto fundamentals are strengthening.

Lee said ETH rose from $2,375 in July last year to $4,057 by the end of August. He also said that in months when ETH significantly outperformed the Invesco QQQ Trust after Bitmine adopted its Ethereum treasury strategy, Bitmine shares often outperformed ETH in the following month.

Separately, Bitmine repurchased 4.5 million common shares last week. Under its previously announced $4 billion share buyback program, the company has repurchased a total of 16.1 million common shares since Aug. 1.