BitMine Immersion Technologies has bought Ethereum every single week since June 30, 2025, becoming the most dependable source of demand the token has. BitMine’s Chairman, Tom Lee, has announced that the long-running accumulation of ETH by the company will end once it holds 5% of the supply. Will BitMine stop buying Ethereum? BitMine’s Chairman, Tom Lee, announced today at the Token2049 conference in Singapore that once the company holds 5% of circulating ETH, it will stop buying. BitMine recently bought roughly 15,112 ETH, bringing its holdings to 6,016,414 ETH, about 4.9% of Ethereum’s 122.1 million token supply.Lee has branded the company’s push toward the threshold the “Alchemy of 5%.” He called that level a “hard cap,” and said BitMine is roughly 100,000 ETH short of it. The company will close that gap in about six to seven more weeks of purchases if it maintains the same pace as last week. “We thought this would take five years,” Lee said. “It took us a little over a year.” Lee also said the company could sell the ETH it earns through staking to keep its share of supply from drifting past the ceiling. Back in August, in an interview with Bankless, Lee said BitMine would not need to sell any ETH out of financial necessity, because staking rewards of roughly $300 million a year easily cover the $30 million to $35 million in annual dividends owed on its 9.5% Series A preferred stock. “Instead of us selling Ethereum, we’re more likely trying to find ways to monetize our Ethereum holdings,” he said at the time.Lee also said at that time that it “would make a ton of sense” to own more than 5% if enterprises began holding ETH as a long-duration asset, and that the company would revisit the question in 2027. Why does it make sense for BitMine to stop buying? Stopping the accumulation of ETH removes any need to keep tapping capital markets, which Lee argued should help the stock track ETH more closely on the way up. The company funded its treasury through a $300 million perpetual preferred offering in June and a multibillion-dollar share buyback.Even with buying halted, the pile can still grow. Most of it, 5,067,309 ETH, which is about 84% of the treasury worth $13.8 billion, is staked through BitMine’s MAVAN network, throwing off a projected $363 million a year at a 2.63% seven-day yield. Selling those rewards is how Lee now says the company would stay under 5%.BitMine bought much of its stash when Ethereum was trading at higher bull-market prices. At current prices, the company carries roughly $4.5 billion in unrealized losses. ETH traded near $2,567 on Wednesday, down by close to 6%. Cryptopolitan reported in September that Lee expects tokenization and AI agents to eventually push Ether past Bitcoin. The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.