I just noticed something quite interesting in Bitmine’s movement these days. The company already controls 4.87 million ETH valued at more than $10 billion, which means it is only 19% away from its goal of accumulating 5% of the total circulating supply of ether. Pretty ambitious if you think about it.

What caught my attention the most was what Tom Lee, the company’s president, said. He described ether as a store of value in times of war, and frankly, the numbers back him up. Since the situation in Iran began a little over a month and a half ago, ETH has risen 17.4%, leaving both the S&P 500 and gold far behind in terms of performance. That’s a difference of almost 1,800 basis points versus the index and nearly 2,700 versus gold. This is not a small detail.

What I find most strategic is how Bitmine is monetizing its position. They have 3.33 million ETH in staking, representing 68% of their total holdings. This generates about $212 million annually on an annualized basis just from staking income. It’s a solid cash flow while it waits for the asset to appreciate.

Tom Lee has made it clear that he believes we are in the final stages of what he calls the mini crypto winter. The company has been buying aggressively, accumulating 71,524 ETH just in the last week. This marks the fourth consecutive week of accelerated purchases, the highest rate since late December of last year.

What’s interesting is the underlying argument Tom Lee is making. He doesn’t see ETH as only a DeFi token. He frames it as a double bet: first, on tokenization on Wall Street that is already beginning to happen, and second, on the infrastructure that IA agentica systems will need. Both trends require public and neutral blockchains.

In total numbers, Bitmine now manages a treasury of $11.8 billion, including $719 million in cash and various positions in what they call moonshots, such as a stake in what they describe as one of the few public stocks that offers direct exposure to OpenAI. This makes it the largest corporate ether treasury in the world and the second largest overall in cryptocurrencies.

The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange recently under the symbol BMNR, with an average daily volume of nearly $750 million. It’s interesting to see how corporate crypto treasuries are becoming an increasingly serious topic for Wall Street. Tom Lee and his team are clearly betting big that this is only the beginning.