Market tone: Bearish
John Chen · Crypto Briefing · 2026-10-11T11:05:28.000Z
The Ethereum treasury firm repurchased 21 million shares while continuing to stack ETH, a two-track strategy management says is about undervaluation
BitMine Immersion Technologies just spent about $350 million buying itself back.
Executive Chairman Tom Lee says the company repurchased 21 million shares of its own stock. He calls it the largest buyback ever executed by a crypto stock. For a company best known for hoarding Ethereum, it’s a notable shift in where the cash is going.
The buyback, by the numbers
The repurchases ran from mid-July through August 17, 2026, when the program wrapped up. Over that window, BitMine (NYSE: BMNR) retired 21 million common shares for roughly $350 million.
The pace was uneven. At its peak, weekly buying reached close to 6 million shares, and later company updates kept reporting additional millions.
This wasn’t an improvised move. The purchases fall under a broader share-repurchase authorization that BitMine expanded from $1 billion to $4 billion in April 2026.
The stated logic is straightforward. BitMine’s leadership believes the stock trades below the value of the digital assets sitting on its balance sheet.
Lee’s scorecard: BMNR versus ETH
Lee has framed the buyback as a defensive success. By his comparison, BMNR fell about 3% while ETH declined approximately 10%.
For a company whose fortunes are tied to Ethereum, that gap is the point. Treasury stocks usually behave like leveraged bets on their underlying asset, amplifying both rallies and selloffs.
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Lee credits the repurchases as a key reason the stock didn’t fall harder.
The Ethereum war chest behind it
None of this replaces BitMine’s core identity. The company launched its Ethereum-focused treasury strategy on June 30, 2025, and has bought ETH on a weekly basis since then.
The result is a stockpile of roughly 6 million ETH. That represents nearly 4.9% of Ethereum’s total supply and makes BitMine the largest corporate Ethereum treasury.
BitMine isn’t just letting those tokens sit idle. About 87% of its holdings are staked through the MAVAN platform, meaning the ETH is locked up to help secure the Ethereum network in exchange for rewards.
Depending on yield levels, BitMine projects annualized revenue of between $250 million and $363 million from this activity.
The preferred stock side of the story
BitMine has also tapped investors through preferred equity. Its BMNP shares, a 9.5% Series A perpetual preferred, have climbed roughly 24% from their $80 issue price.
At current levels, BMNP yields 9.56%.
What this means for investors and rivals
For shareholders, retiring 21 million shares means each remaining share represents a slightly larger claim on BitMine’s ETH holdings and staking income.
There are trade-offs worth watching. Every dollar spent on buybacks is a dollar not spent on more ETH, and the right balance depends on how wide the gap between share price and asset value actually is.
The remaining capacity under the $4 billion authorization is the number to track. How much more BitMine chooses to deploy, and when, will show how seriously management means it when it calls the stock undervalued.
Originally published by Crypto Briefing.