The last purchase of Bitmine occurred exactly one week after the Ethereum Foundation sold another tranche of 10,000 $ETH, at that time valued at around $24,000,000. The foundation again stated that the funds would be directed toward "core operations and activities, including protocol research and development, ecosystem growth, grant funding for the community, and much more."

In this latest deal, Bitmine paid an average of $2,292.15 per $ETH.

According to the analytics platform Lookonchain, the largest digital asset fund based on Ethereum, which sold approximately $47,000,000 worth of $ETH to Bitmine over the week, also began staking an additional 162,088 $ETH on Thursday. Thus, the total amount of $ETH staked in Bitmine reached 4,194,029 $ETH, worth about $9,500,000,000 and representing 83% of the company's total assets.

According to The Block Price Page, on Friday, Ethereum's price increased by more than 2%, reaching $2,309.80 as of 14:26 Eastern Time. Bitmine purchased $ETH from the Ethereum Foundation through over-the-counter deals.

Bitmine steadily increases its staking volume of $ETH to generate income. Last week, the company's staking share approached 70% of its total assets.

In the past, sales of $ETH by the Ethereum Foundation have sparked criticism. At one point last year, the organization announced plans to limit $ETH sales. To this end, the foundation also began staking some of its $ETH assets and deploying them in DeFi to generate income for the organization. Nevertheless, the Ethereum Foundation made several sales to companies like Bitmine and SharpLink, which work with Ethereum's treasury. Bitmine bought 5,000 $ETH from the foundation in March.

The announcement on Friday, published on X, drew a lot of criticism.

"Why do you need $46,000,000 in 2 weeks?! How much are you spending and on what?" asked one of the followers.