Bitmine Nears Goal of Owning 5% of All Ethereum as ETH Tops $2,500

Bitmine has bought Ether every week for 14 months and now owns 4.8% of all ETH, as prices break above $2,500 for the first time since January.

A company called Bitmine has spent over $19.5 billion buying Ethereum — and it's almost reached its huge goal of owning 5% of all the Ether that exists.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies, led by well-known market analyst Tom Lee, has been buying Ether (ETH, the second-biggest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin) every single week for about 14 months. This is called a treasury strategy — when a company holds a specific asset (in this case crypto) as a core part of its finances, much like a savings pile.

Here are the key numbers:

Bought 32,447 ETH last week alone
Now holds 5,847,611 ETH — roughly 4.8% of all Ether in circulation
That puts it at 97% of its goal to own 5% of the total ETH supply
Total investments (crypto, cash, and other assets) worth $14.9 billion
87% of its ETH is 'staked' (locked up to help run the Ethereum network in exchange for rewards, similar to earning interest)

Why is this in the news now? The price of Ether recently jumped above $2,500 for the first time since January, rising more than 32% in just days. This happened after the US Treasury (the government's finance department) announced it would double its monthly buying of certain government bonds — a move that tends to put more money into markets and boost risky assets like crypto.

The bumpy ride: Bitmine kept buying ETH even while prices were falling, leaving it with big unrealized losses (paper losses that only become real if you sell). Those losses have now shrunk from over $8.4 billion to below $5 billion thanks to the recent price recovery.

Bitmine's shares on the New York Stock Exchange also rose about 8.7% to start the week.

The bottom line: Bitmine's story shows both the potential rewards and the huge risks of betting big on cryptocurrency. Prices can swing wildly, turning massive losses into smaller ones — or the other way around — very quickly.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitmine-eth-holdings-5-percent-ether-price-breakout?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound