Tom Lee’s BitMine Buys Another $23 Million in ETH From Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation said Friday that it finalized a deal to sell 10,000 ETH to the largest Ethereum treasury firm, BitMine Immersion Technologies, marking its second treasury sale of the cryptocurrency to the publicly traded firm.

The over-the-counter sale agreement was finalized at an average price of $2,387 per ETH, putting the total value of the sale at $23.87 million. Ethereum was recently trading at $2,313, down about 1% on the day and 5% over the last week.

BitMine’s stock (BMNR) is up more than 1% on the day, recently trading at $22.25. BMNR shares have fallen about 3% over the last week, but have risen by more than 7% in the last month per Yahoo Finance data.

“This sale funds the Ethereum Foundation’s core operations & activities, including protocol R&D, ecosystem development, community grant funding, and more,” the Foundation wrote on X.

In March, the Foundation sold 5,000 ETH to the company at an average price of about $2,043 per coin. The Ethereum Foundation has also previously sold ETH to another Ethereum treasury firm, Sharplink, with a 10,000 ETH sale last July.

Ethereum’s price has fallen sharply since last summer, when it hit a new peak of $4,946 and momentum around the coin—and the broader crypto market—helped fuel the emergence of a number of Ethereum treasury companies.

BitMine is the largest such firm by far, with over $11.5 billion in Ethereum holdings fueled by consistent weekly buys. However, the substantial price drop means that the company is currently sitting on an unrealized loss of more than $6 billion, per data from DropsTab. (Disclosure: BitMine Chairman Tom Lee is an investor in Dastan, parent company of an editorially independent Decrypt.)

On Monday, BitMine revealed its largest weekly Bitcoin buy of the year, adding $235 million worth of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. The company held 4,976,485 ETH as of Monday.