Bitmine bought $75 million ether as Tom Lee says institutions are still underweight crypto

Bitmine Immersion Technologies BMNR$27.50·Market Closed, the largest Ethereum treasury firm, bought another 27,562 ether

The purchase was worth about $75.2 million at Monday’s ether price of $2,727, lifting Bitmine’s holdings to 5,983,940 $ETH. That’s about 4.9% of the token’s 122.1 million supply, keeping the company close to its goal of owning 5%.

The firm has been buying at a similar pace in recent weeks and, at that rate, could reach its accumulation goal in the next couple of months. The company said it bought ether every week since June 2025, when it pivoted to a crypto treasury strategy.

Bitmine has staked about 5 million $ETH, roughly 85% of its holdings, and projected a staking revenue of roughly $357 million annually at current yields.

Bitmine shares were 5.8% higher pre-market, extending Friday’s 8% rally as $ETH surged overnight to a fresh high since late January.

Tom Lee sees year-end catch-up for crypto

Tom Lee, meanwhile, said institutional investors may be playing catch-up after favoring artificial intelligence-linked stocks earlier in the year.

Since the end of June, $ETH has risen 76%, far more than the S&P 500’s modest 2% gain, outperforming the stock index. Lee said that kind of gap could draw more attention from fund managers who have stayed light on crypto this year.

“Given institutions have underweighted crypto in 2026, partially due to the outperformance of AI stocks in early 2026, we expect institutions to substantially increase their exposure in the final three months of 2026,” Lee said.

He also pointed to tokenization and the growing use of blockchain in AI as longer-term reasons institutions may increase their exposure.