ETH, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum ecosystem, rose 0.95% during US market hours on Friday to trade at $2,312. Buying pressure has gained its current momentum in the wake of the traditional US stock market as indices such as the S&P500 and NasDaq have reached a new high. The currency price gained additional momentum from continued buying pressure from treasury companies such as Bitmain. After continued buying, the company is close to its stated goal of owning 5% of all Ethereum in existence. Once this is achieved, will BitMine stop accumulating more ETH and how could this affect the price of Ethereum.
The origin of the strategy
BitMine’s obsession with Ethereum started off in a big way. The company closed a $250 million private placement that it used to instantly invest in ETH, doubling its stake within days of the closing. Thomas “Tom” Lee, the founder of Fundstrat, is the engineer behind it and was the president of BitMine, the public face of Ethereum believers.
Lee’s thesis was simple but brave: copy MicroStrategy Bitcoin, but this time using Ethereum. MicroStrategy’s continued buying of Bitcoin has fueled its growth into what analysts describe as a “sovereign position”: If a nation-state wanted to buy 5% of the Bitcoin network, it would find it easier to buy MSTR.
Lee said the same could happen for Ethereum as it did for Bitcoin, which he called a “Wall Street situation.” For any institutional level exposure to Ethereum that could be beneficial, you will eventually have to go through BitMine.
The 5% target and the buying machine
The number “5%” was never a random number. It was the turning point at which Lee and BitMine decided that their investments would become strategically important enough for sovereign wealth funds, Wall Street institutions, and nation-states to take an interest in them. Today, BitMine owns more than 4.29% of Ethereum’s total circulating supply of 120.7 million tokens, and says it is 82% of the way to that milestone. The pace of buying was astonishing. The company alone purchased 71,524 ETH over the past week, the highest single-week purchase since December 2025. At this rate, the 5% finish line is not far away. It’s just a matter of weeks.
