Who Is Tom Lee, BitMine Chairman Building a Multi-Billion Ethereum Treasury With New $22.9 Million Purchase

BitMine Immersion Technologies bought 10,000 ETH from the Ethereum Foundation on Friday, May 1, 2026, at an average price of $2,292, the Foundation said in an X post. The deal is worth $22.9 million and is the third over-the-counter sale the Foundation has made to BitMine in about six weeks.

The purchase was made by BitMine, led by Chairman Tom Lee, the co-founder of Fundstrat. Prior to this purchase, BitMine held more than 5.07 million ETH, according to BitMine's April 27, 2026, press release. The holdings are worth around $11.7 billion and carry an unrealized loss of more than $6.3 billion at current prices.

BitMine is the largest corporate holder of Ethereum in the world. It is also one of the most aggressive accumulators in any digital asset, public or private.

BitMine's Ethereum Buying Spree in 2025 and 2026

BitMine started its Ethereum treasury in July 2025 after closing a $250 million private placement at $4.50 per share. The deal was led by MOZAYYX, with Founders Fund, Pantera, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, DCG, Republic Digital, FalconX, and Tom Lee himself participating, according to the company's June 30, 2025 announcement. Lee was named Chairman the same day.

The first ETH purchase was disclosed on July 14, 2025: 163,142 ETH at an average of about $3,072.

From there, the buying did not stop. By August 31, BitMine held 1.86 million ETH. By December 22, it crossed 4 million ETH. By April 27, 2026, the company reported 5,078,386 ETH, which it described in a press release as a "world record" for any corporate ETH treasury.

The Ethereum Foundation has now sold ETH directly to BitMine three times. The first sale was in March 2026 for 5,000 ETH at about $2,043 per coin. The second was on April 25 for 10,000 ETH at $2,387. The third is Friday's $22.9 million deal.

The Foundation said in its X post that the proceeds fund “core operations and activities, including protocol R&D, ecosystem development, community grant funding, and more.” It used the same language for the previous two sales.

Last week, BitMine also disclosed its biggest ETH buy of 2026 so far. The company added 101,901 ETH in a single week, worth around $235 million at current prices. That buy is what pushed the treasury past the 5 million ETH milestone.

Who Tom Lee Is

Lee is a longtime Wall Street strategist who moved into crypto analysis during the early stages of Bitcoin adoption.

Lee is Chairman of BitMine, and co-founder and Head of Research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, an independent research firm he started in 2014. Before that, he was Chief Equity Strategist at JPMorgan from 2007 to 2014.

He published one of Wall Street's first formal Bitcoin valuation frameworks in 2017, projecting BTC at $20,000 to $55,000 by 2022. Both targets were eventually hit. He has been a regular CNBC contributor for more than a decade.

On January 5, 2026, on CNBC's Squawk Box, Lee predicted Bitcoin would set a new all-time high by the end of 2026 and reach $200,000 to $250,000. He also said Ethereum could reach $7,000 to $9,000.

What BitMine Is and How the Strategy Works

BitMine was originally a small Bitcoin mining company that ran immersion-cooled mining sites in Trinidad and Texas. Before the June 2025 pivot, the company had about 2.5 million shares outstanding and held just 154 BTC, according to its own filings.

After Lee took over, BitMine declared Ethereum its primary treasury reserve asset. The strategy is modeled on Michael Saylor's Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which holds about 780,000 BTC.

The funding mechanism is equity issuance. BitMine raised $250 million in the initial PIPE, $365 million in a registered direct offering on September 22, 2025, at $70 per share plus warrants at $87.50, and ran an at-the-market program that was expanded from $2 billion to $4.5 billion to $24.5 billion across July and August 2025. As of February 28, 2026, only $6.7 million of that ATM program remained available.

Shareholders approved an increase in the authorized share count from 500 million to 50 billion at a January 14, 2026, vote. Outstanding shares grew from about 2.5 million to more than 425 million in 16 months.

BMNR stock peaked at $161 on July 3, 2025, days after the pivot. It traded at $21.78 on Friday, up 1.75% on the day and up more than 10% over the past month. ETH is up 7.5% over the same period.

Why Lee Says He Is Buying Ethereum

Lee has consistently cited the same set of reasons in CNBC interviews, X posts, BitMine investor presentations, and Fundstrat reports. He calls the strategy the "Alchemy of 5%" — a target of owning 5% of all ETH in circulation.

His core argument is that stablecoins are Ethereum's "ChatGPT moment." More than half of all stablecoins by market cap are issued on Ethereum, according to DeFiLlama data Lee has cited. He has argued that if the stablecoin market grows from around $250 billion today to the $2 trillion figure floated by former Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Ethereum captures most of that activity.

Lee has also pointed to tokenization. He has cited BlackRock CEO Larry Fink calling tokenization a major financial innovation, and noted that JPMorgan's stablecoin and Robinhood's tokenization product both run on Ethereum. More than 60% of tokenized real-world assets are on Ethereum, according to figures Lee has used in BitMine investor materials.

In an April 2026 BitMine press release, Lee called ETH the "wartime store of value," citing Etherealize research showing ETH outperformed the S&P 500 since the U.S.–Iran conflict began.

The treasury also generates yield. BitMine launched its own staking platform, MAVAN — short for "Made in America Validator Network" — on March 25, 2026. The company said in a press release that it has more than 3.7 million ETH staked, generating about $264 million in annualized staking revenue, with potential to reach $300 million to $363 million at full deployment.

The buying continues even with $6.3 billion of unrealized losses on the books. BitMine's average ETH cost is well above the current ~$2,300 price, depending on which calculation is used. Lee posted on X in December 2025 that the average price was "close to $2,991." Other Independent on-chain analyses put it higher, between $3,768 and $4,037.