Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR) is nearing the end of a buying program that turned the listed firm into the largest corporate holder of Ethereum. Speaking at the Token2049 conference in Singapore on October 7, 2026, chairman Tom Lee said the company will stop accumulating ether once its position reaches 5 percent of the token’s circulating supply, a level he described as a hard ceiling rather than a flexible milestone.
The firm is already close. In a disclosure covering holdings as of October 4, Bitmine reported 6,016,414 ETH, equal to roughly 4.9 percent of the about 122.1 million tokens then in circulation.
Lee said only about 100,000 additional coins were required to reach the limit.
At the pace of recent weekly purchases—including roughly $41 million of ether added in the preceding week—that gap could close in six to seven weeks if buying continues at a similar rate and prices do not shift sharply.
He noted that management had once expected the process to take about five years; instead it took a little more than a year, much of it during a weaker market.
The strategy began in late June 2025.
Since then Bitmine has purchased ether every week, creating one of the more consistent sources of spot demand for the asset.
At prices near $2,580 around the time of the remarks, the stack was worth on the order of $15.5 billion.
The company has also reported several hundred million dollars in cash and marketable securities, enough on paper to cover the remaining purchases without an immediate new capital raise.
Lee has framed the 5 percent cap as a way to protect shareholders: once accumulation ends, the firm no longer needs to issue equity or take on financing solely to buy more ether, which he has argued could let the stock respond more directly if the token rises.
Ending the purchases does not, on the statements available so far, mean selling the existing treasury.
Much of the position is already staked.
Reporting around the conference indicated that Bitmine intends to keep staking and may sell staking rewards so the holding does not drift above the stated ceiling.
The firm is also sitting on large unrealized losses, on the order of several billion dollars, because a substantial share of the coins was acquired at higher prices during the prior bull phase.
Lee has characterized the completed buying as preparation ahead of a much larger move in ether, rather than as a signal that the company is exiting.
Ether’s price softened after the comments, falling several percent and trading below $2,600 in the sessions that followed, with futures liquidations concentrated on long positions.
Bitcoin and other major crypto assets declined over the same stretch, however, which points away from a purely ether-specific reaction.
Broader selling has been linked to rising US Treasury yields, higher oil prices, and geopolitical tension involving Iran, including market responses to statements about the timing of any potential US action relative to the midterm elections.
Spot ether exchange-traded funds have also recorded multi-day outflows, adding another source of supply unrelated to Bitmine’s treasury policy.
That wider backdrop makes a lasting, fundamental repricing tied only to the cap less likely.
Bitmine is not announcing a disposal of its roughly 6 million ETH, and the network’s issuance, staking, or usage mechanics are unchanged by a corporate buyer deciding to stop.
The removal of a steady weekly bid is a real shift in marginal demand, and it arrives while ETF flows have been negative, so near-term pressure can persist.
Over a longer horizon, though, a decline driven mainly by the end of one buyer’s accumulation—while that buyer retains the coins and while bitcoin and the rest of the market are moving for separate macro reasons—fits the profile of a temporary setback more than a structural break.