A second corporate cryptocurrency hoarder is starting to look a lot like the first.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), the treasury firm chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, purchased 101,901 ether (ETH) worth about $234 million last week. That’s close to the regular weekly purchases of Strategy (MSTR), the bitcoin led by Michael Saylor. digital treasury company, as noted by follower cryptocurrency trader Luke Martin on X.
Strategy’s normal weekly purchases are around $200 million to $300 million, once large purchases driven by market sales of its STRC perpetual preferred shares are removed. The STRC peaks (the massive bursts that appear in mid-January, late February, late March, and most recently on April 21 at $2.54 billion) are outliers, not the baseline.
The Bitmine purchase was its biggest weekly build of 2026, ending a four-month streak of rising purchases that began at about $76 million per week in early January. It now holds over 5 million tokens, or around 4.21% of the second-largest cryptocurrency’s circulating supply.
This structural development is important because BitMine is now the only major corporate cryptocurrency buyer keeping pace with Strategy.
Most digital asset treasuries halted or slowed accumulation during the February price crash that took bitcoin to the mid-$60,000s and ether below $1,900. The strategy itself ended a 13-week bitcoin buying streak in late March before restarting in April.
Lee’s approach to the pace of buying is that ETH is in the late stages of a “mini crypto winter” and that a bottom is forming in the stock markets. Bitmine adopted its current strategy in June 2025 and reached the 5 million ETH milestone in about 10 months.
The company has staked about 73% of those tokens, generating approximately $264 million in annualized performance revenue. Total cryptocurrency and cash holdings stood at $13.3 billion as of early April.
The two companies share a manual of capital markets activities (strategy through preferred shares and convertible debt, Bitmine through the issuance of shares) to purchase crypto assets.
Under pressure
BitMine’s strategy came under pressure in February and early March, when it racked up nearly $8 billion in unrealized losses against $16 billion in outright purchases.
The company continued buying. Two months later, ether is up 22% from its February lows, and the pace of Bitmine accumulation has not only been maintained, but accelerated.
Strategy’s April 21 $2.54 billion purchase remains the largest corporate cryptocurrency purchase of the year. But Bitmine’s $234 million last week is the first time the structural baselines are within striking distance of each other.
If the pattern holds for another month, ether will have something it has never had before: a corporate buyer equivalent to the strategy that absorbs supply every week regardless of price.
