The world’s largest corporate Ethereum whale, Bitmine Immersion Technologies, has revealed its hand and disclosed financial reserves worth $11.5 billion. Its treasury currently holds 5,777,468 ETH — a colossal 4.8% of the coin’s total global supply of 120.7 million ETH.
In just one year, Bitmine has come close to achieving its ambitious “Alchemy of 5%” target. In the global ranking of publicly traded crypto treasuries, the company trails only Strategy Inc., with its $55 billion Bitcoin portfolio.
However, another detail in the report caught investors off guard — at the peak of the market downturn, the top whale unexpectedly and sharply reduced its cryptocurrency purchases.
Tactical maneuver: share buyback instead of Ethereum
Over the past three weeks, Bitmine has consistently reduced its purchase volumes. In early July, the company took 42,197 ETH, worth $74 million, off the market in one week. It then bought another 27,801 ETH, while purchases over the past seven days fell to a modest 7,430 ETH, worth approximately $13.9 million.
The sixfold slowdown is not a sign of panic, as Bitmine Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee explained that the company is still buying ETH every week, but its focus has temporarily shifted to repurchasing its own shares.
Ethereum is currently trapped within its long-term support zone of $1,500–$1,800 and is trading near $1,856. For Bitmine, with an average portfolio purchase price of $1,879, this remains a comfortable accumulation zone. However, the company’s shares have suffered much more severely from the market turmoil than the cryptocurrency itself.
Since the beginning of June, Ethereum has corrected by 8.07%, while Bitmine shares, traded under the ticker BMNR, plunged as much as 32% at their local low and were still down 12.96% as of July 20. Seeing this inefficiency, management activated a $4 billion buyback program.
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The company spent approximately $86 million repurchasing its own shares at an average price of $15.61 — six times more than it allocated to Ethereum over the same period. The decision immediately triggered a powerful V-shaped rebound in BMNR shares.
Yes, Bitmine has temporarily reduced its buying pressure on the Ethereum order book to protect its own market capitalization. However, the company needs to acquire only slightly more than 250,000 additional coins to reach the coveted threshold of 5% of Ethereum’s total global supply and will likely complete this accumulation round as soon as it fully stabilizes the price of its shares on the stock market.
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