Bitmine Buys 71,672 ETH in One Week as Tom Lee Targets 5% of Ethereum Supply

Tom Lee Says Bitmine Will Hit 5% of ETH Supply Sometime in 2026

The Norwalk, Conn.-based company reported the figures as of May 18, 2026, disclosing total crypto, cash, and “moonshot” holdings of $12.6 billion. That figure includes 5,278,462 ETH valued at $2,191 per token, $685 million in cash, a $200 million stake in Beast Industries, and an $83 million position in Eightco Holdings (Nasdaq: ORBS).

Bitmine’s ETH position represents 4.37% of the total circulating supply of 120.7 million tokens. The company says it is 87% of the way toward what it calls the “Alchemy of 5%” goal, a threshold it has been working toward over 11 months.

Tom Lee, chairman of Bitmine, said the company acquired 71,672 ETH in the past week alone. “We view the recent pullback of ETH to below $2,200 as an attractive opportunity,” Lee remarked. Lee added:

“Bitmine is expected to reach the ‘alchemy of 5%’ sometime in 2026.”

Of the 5.28 million ETH held, the company has staked 4,712,917 tokens, valued at $10.3 billion. Annualized staking revenues now stand at $289 million, based on a seven-day yield of 2.80%. “At scale, when Bitmine’s ETH is fully staked by MAVAN and its staking partners, the projected ETH staking reward is $324 million annually,” Lee continued.

MAVAN, short for Made in America Validator Network, is Bitmine’s institutional-grade ethereum staking platform. The company launched MAVAN to support its own treasury operations but intends to open the platform to institutional investors, custodians, and ecosystem partners.

Bitmine uplisted to the New York Stock Exchange from NYSE American on April 9, 2026, continuing to trade under the ticker BMNR. Company stats say the stock now ranks 133rd among 5,704 U.S.-listed equities by average daily dollar volume, trading $857 million per day over the five-day period ending May 15, 2026. That places it behind Applied Digital Corp and ahead of Capital One Financial Corp.

The company remains the largest ethereum ( ETH) treasury in the world and ranks second globally among all crypto treasuries, behind Strategy Inc. (Nasdaq: MSTR), which holds 843,738 bitcoin valued at approximately $65.33 billion using current BTC exchange rates.

Backers include Ark Investment Management’s Cathie Wood, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Kraken, Digital Currency Group, Galaxy Digital, Bill Miller III and MOZAYYX, alongside personal investor Tom Lee.

Lee also addressed the CLARITY Act, which cleared the Senate Banking Committee last week and is headed to the full Senate. “The CLARITY Act provides the necessary regulatory clarity for the crypto industry and Wall Street to build the next generation set of financial products and architecture,” Lee said. He added that Bitmine believes the probability of passage exceeds the 61% implied by Polymarket.com.

Ethereum’s growth continues to draw support from Wall Street tokenization activity and increasing demand from agentic AI systems that rely on public, neutral blockchains for operations.