Just saw a pretty interesting move. Last week, Bitmine spent $238 million to buy 101,745 ETH, and the company has now become the world’s largest corporate Ethereum holder. According to the latest announcement, the total amount of ETH they hold has already surpassed 5.18 million, accounting for 4.29% of the total ETH circulating supply.

This isn’t just a simple buying action. In a statement, Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee emphasized that although market sentiment still seems a bit sluggish, a new “crypto spring” has actually already quietly begun. He believes the market is gradually recovering from the difficulties of the past few months, and that the U.S. CLARITY bill has brought positive signals. According to data from decentralized prediction market Polymarket, traders are betting that the bill’s chance of passing this year is already over 60%.

What’s interesting is that Tom Lee pointed out that Ethereum is benefiting from two long-term trends. One is the “tokenization” wave of financial assets on-chain, and the other is the explosive growth of AI tools. He expects that future AI systems will need neutral and open blockchain networks to handle payments and identity verification, which will significantly increase practical demand for the Ethereum network.

From an asset allocation perspective, the total size of Bitmine’s crypto and cash assets is $13.1 billion. In addition to ETH, they also hold 200 BTC, $700 million in cash, and equity. Even more interestingly, they have staked more than 84% of their ETH—namely 4.36 million ETH—expected to generate roughly $297 million in annualized returns.

Finally, Tom Lee also mentioned that since the outbreak of the Iran conflict, ETH’s performance has outpaced traditional stock markets, showing that ETH is gradually being viewed by the market as a dual-purpose asset with both store-of-value and medium-of-exchange properties. It looks like institutional investors still have a lot of confidence in Ethereum’s future.