Tom Lee Hints Bitmine’s Aggressive ETH Buying Is Almost Over

Bitmine has single-handedly become Ethereum’s most important institutional buyer, snapping up more than 5.5 million ETH since mid-2025. Now, with holdings at 4.6% of total supply and Tom Lee signaling the company may not need to go beyond 5%, that support could soon disappear.

The company added 25,000 ETH from BitGo this week, the final piece of a three-day buying streak totaling 125,000 coins worth roughly $206 million. ETH jumped 3% on the news. But Tom Lee has indicated the accumulation pace could slow.

ETH Was Already Fighting Before This

Ethereum was already struggling before any talk of Bitmine stepping back. The asset is down roughly 44% year-to-date, sitting more than 55% below its August 2025 all-time high of $4,953. Spot ETH ETFs recorded 17 consecutive days of net outflows in May, draining $401 million from the market.

Ethereum Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto

Analysts at JPMorgan said ETH is unlikely to reverse its multi-year underperformance against Bitcoin without meaningful improvements in network activity and real-world adoption.

Tom Lee has publicly brushed off the ETH losses, calling Ethereum’s fundamentals strong. But institutional capital has kept leaving, and the price has kept lagging.

Bitmine Filled the ETH Buyer Gap

Bitcoin has Strategy, a publicly listed company holding more than 818,000 BTC that acts as a structural floor under Bitcoin’s price. Until Bitmine launched its Ethereum treasury strategy in mid-2025, ETH had no comparable anchor buyer. The announcement sent BMNR stock up 694% and gave Ethereum one of its few consistent bullish narratives in a year of persistent outflows.

“The entire financial system today is built on tech stack on top of tech stack and there’s a lot of fake/fraudulant transactions. Ether (and btc) has had zero fraudulent transactions. Blockchains are also much cheaper to run.” – Tom Lee making case for Ethereum to Ric Edelman at… pic.twitter.com/PTTZsLVdgx

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) June 10, 2026

Bitmine’s three-day buying streak this week pushed total holdings to 5,543,872 ETH, equal to 4.59% of Ethereum’s 120.7 million circulating tokens. Tom Lee framed his 5% target as the point at which the strategy’s logic fully plays out. The implied message: once the company crosses that line, the rationale for aggressive weekly buying weakens.

Ethereum Needs a New Answer

Strategy gives Bitcoin a reliable institutional anchor at every dip; Ethereum’s equivalent is fragile and concentrated in one company. Observers have already questioned whether ETH was even the right asset for a corporate treasury strategy to begin with, given the token’s persistent underperformance.

The network hosts the majority of stablecoin transactions, real-world asset tokenization, and decentralized finance activity. On-chain metrics have held up even as the price hasn’t. But price and fundamentals have been diverging for months, and Bitmine’s buying has been one of the few forces keeping that gap from growing faster.

Without a new institutional buyer to take its place, ETH faces a simple problem: fewer reasons to buy and one fewer entity setting the floor.