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Tom Lee Signals that Aggressive ETH Buying by Bitmine is Almost Complete

Bitmine alone has become the most significant institutional buyer of Ethereum, accumulating over 5.5 million ETH since mid-2025. Now, with a holding of 4.6% of the total supply and Tom Lee suggesting the company may not need to pass 5%, that support could soon disappear.

The company added 25,000 ETH from BitGo this week, completing the last part of a three-day buying spree totaling 125,000 coins or about US$206 million. ETH prices rose 3% on this news. But Tom Lee has indicated that the accumulation pace is likely to slow down.

ETH Has Struggled Before

Ethereum faced difficulties even before the possibility of Bitmine retreating emerged. The asset declined about 44% throughout 2025, and is still more than 55% below its all-time high in August 2025 at US$4,953. Spot Ethereum ETFs recorded net outflows for 17 consecutive days in May, pulling US$401 million out of the market.

Analysts at JPMorgan say ETH is unlikely to reverse its poor performance over the next few years against Bitcoin without significant increases in network activity and real-world adoption.

Tom Lee openly dismisses ETH’s losses, citing strong Ethereum fundamentals. But institutional funds continue to exit, and prices remain lagging.

Bitmine Fills ETH Buyer Gap

Bitcoin has Strategy, a public company holding over 818,000 BTC and acting as a price buffer for Bitcoin. Until Bitmine launched its Ethereum treasury strategy in mid-2025, ETH lacked a major institutional buyer like that. This announcement drove BMNR shares up 694% and gave Ethereum a bullish narrative amid a year full of outflows.

Bitmine’s three-day buying spree this week increased total holdings to 5,543,872 ETH, equivalent to 4.59% of the 120.7 million circulating Ethereum tokens. Tom Lee stated that the 5% target is the point where the logic of this strategy is fully realized. The implied message: once the company surpasses that threshold, the rationale for aggressive weekly buying weakens.

Ethereum Needs a New Answer

Strategy provides Bitcoin with a strong institutional buffer whenever prices fall; meanwhile, Ethereum’s support remains fragile and depends on just one company. Observers have questioned from the start whether ETH is truly the right asset for corporate treasury strategies, given its performance that has consistently fallen short of expectations.

Ethereum’s network hosts the majority of stablecoin transactions, real asset tokenization, and decentralized finance activity. On-chain methods remain strong despite price movements not following suit. But prices and fundamentals have been disconnected for several months, and Bitmine’s purchases are one of the forces preventing that gap from widening further.

Without new institutional buyers to replace them, ETH faces a simple problem: fewer reasons to buy and fewer parties holding prices above the bottom.