BitMine Immersion Technologies told the market on Monday that it holds 5,787,414 ETH, worth roughly $11.3 billion at the $1,948 price the company used in its own filing. That works out to 4.8% of the 120.7 million ETH in existence. BitMine calls its target the Alchemy of 5%, and by its own count it is 96% of the way there.
Last week BitMine bought 9,946 tokens.
The headlines that followed the release led with the 5% target and the $11.8 billion total holdings figure. The weekly purchase number sat lower down. Nobody put the two beside each other.
The gap to 5% is 247,586 ETH
Five percent of 120.7 million tokens is 6,035,000 ETH. BitMine holds 5,787,414, which leaves 247,586 to go. Chairman Tom Lee has said the company expects to hit the target sometime in 2026. About twenty two weeks of 2026 are left. Closing that gap inside the window works out to 11,038 ETH a week, every week, with no pause for a bad tape.
BitMine has cleared that pace once in the last three weeks.
| Week ending | ETH acquired | Total ETH held | Common shares repurchased |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 12 | 27,801 | 5,770,038 | not disclosed |
| July 19 | 7,430 | 5,777,468 | 5.5 million at $15.6156 |
| July 26 | 9,946 | 5,787,414 | 6.1 million, price not disclosed |
Average the three weeks and you get 15,059 ETH, a pace that reaches 5% around mid November. Average only the last two and it falls to 8,688, which drags the finish into February of next year. So the 2026 claim rests on whether the late June buying returns or the July slowdown is the new normal, and BitMine has not addressed which one it expects.
Buybacks ran six times the size of the ETH purchase
In the week ending July 19, BitMine acquired 7,430 ETH at a stated price of $1,879. Call it $14.0 million of Ethereum. In the same seven days the company repurchased 5.5 million of its own shares at an average of $15.6156, or about $85.9 million. Six times more money went into the equity than into the asset the equity exists to hold.
Then came another 6.1 million shares last week, price undisclosed. Since July 1 the running total is 11.6 million shares against a $4 billion repurchase authorization the board had already approved.
Management buys back stock when it reads the market as pricing the shares under the assets behind them. For a treasury company that is close to the only available interpretation, because the assets are the entire business. Returning capital rather than adding to the pile has precedent in this market: a protocol that returned $51 million to token holders in 30 days while spending nothing on incentives ran a version of the same trade in May.
Run the July 19 buyback through the ETH price the company quoted that day and the trade-off gets sharper. That $85.9 million would have bought about 45,708 ETH at $1,879. Against the 11,038 a week BitMine needs to reach 5% before January, a single week of share repurchases carried roughly four weeks of the required buying inside it. The board picked the stock.
One thing the release leaves open is where the repurchase money comes from. BitMine reported $268 million in cash and marketable securities. The ETH balance grew in each of the three weeks above, so the buying is not being funded by selling the treasury down.
Staking is now the bigger number
BitMine has 4,917,189 ETH staked, about $9.6 billion, generating what the company projects at $254 million annualized on a 7 day yield of 2.65%. Stake the remainder and that projection climbs to $299 million. Put $254 million a year next to the $19.4 million BitMine spent buying ETH last week and the character of the operation looks different from the one in the headlines. It reads more like a yield book with a purchase desk bolted on.
Everything else on the balance sheet is rounding: 208 BTC, a $180 million position in Beast Industries, $61 million in Eightco Holdings. Ethereum and the income it throws off are the company.
Positions this concentrated tend to get tested eventually. Coinliva has already tracked a $10 billion crypto portfolio shrinking to $2 billion with every step visible on chain, and this month brought the shutdown of an exchange that once ran 57% of crypto derivatives. Neither maps onto BitMine, which carries no customer liabilities and holds spot ETH rather than borrowed claims on it. The comparison worth drawing is narrower: size protects nobody from price.
The next weekly release is due in about seven days. The line to read first is the ETH added over the week, because that single figure decides whether the Alchemy of 5% arrives on the schedule BitMine has been giving people.
