Bitmine Buys Back Its Own Shares as Crypto Prices Dip

Tom Lee's Bitmine spent $46M buying its own stock, betting crypto is stronger than AI shares during the market slump.

A company run by well-known market analyst Tom Lee is making a bold move during the recent crypto downturn — buying back its own shares.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (stock symbol: BMNR) is what's called an Ethereum treasury firm — a company whose main strategy is holding large amounts of the cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) as part of its business.

Last week, Bitmine did two things at once:

Bought back 2.04 million of its own shares for about $45.9 million (a *share buyback* is when a company repurchases its own stock from the market — this can make remaining shares more valuable).
Bought another 10,452 ETH worth roughly $24.5 million, though this was slower than the week before.

This was Bitmine's first buyback since August 17, ending a 10-week pause. For the whole year, the company has now spent nearly $400 million buying back 22.9 million shares.

Why buy back shares now? Chairman Tom Lee believes the company's stock is *undervalued* (priced lower than it's truly worth). He also argues that cryptocurrencies have held up better than AI-related stocks during the recent market drop.

Lee pointed to the numbers:

Ethereum (ETH) fell 13% from its recent high.
US semiconductor stocks (companies making AI chips) dropped 20% in the same period.

He called this a sign that a crypto bull market (a period of rising prices) is still underway. He blamed the overall slump on investors moving away from *riskier assets* — a mindset traders call "risk off."

Bitmine's Ethereum stash is now huge:

It holds 6,051,933 ETH — about 4.95% of all Ethereum in existence.
It's just 58,000 ETH short of its 5% ownership goal.
About 86% of its ETH is "staked" (locked up to help run the network and earn rewards), expected to generate roughly $318 million per year in income.

The bottom line: As Bitmine gets close to its Ethereum target, it's shifting spending toward buying back its own shares — a signal that management believes in the company's future even while crypto prices wobble.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/10/26/tom-lee-s-bitmine-favors-share-buybacks-to-ether-purchases-as-crypto-declines