The market’s two largest crypto asset holders made opposing moves on the same day, highlighting distinctly different strategies following the broader rally over the past week.

Bitmine Accelerates ETH Purchases, Nearing the 5% Supply Milestone

BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), the largest ETH holder, purchased 32,447 ETH over the past week, valued at approximately $81 million with ETH currently priced around $2,500. This marks their largest buying week since early July, following several months of modest additions.

Bitmine’s total ETH treasury now stands at 5,847,611 tokens, valued at roughly $14.6 billion, representing about 4.8% of Ethereum’s total supply of 120.7 million tokens. Chaired by Tom Lee, the company targets owning 5% of Ethereum’s circulating supply—requiring around 6.04 million ETH at current supply levels, leaving it less than 200,000 tokens shy of the goal. Notably, since launching its ETH treasury strategy in June 2025, Bitmine has not missed a single week of buying, according to Lee.

The vast majority of this ETH has been deployed into staking: 5.07 million tokens, or approximately 87% of total holdings, generating an estimated annual staking revenue of around $330 million at current yields.

Regarding price outlook, Lee pointed to two previous instances where ETH gained over 30% in a single week: in July 2021, after which it surged another 167%, and in May 2025, when it added an additional 170%. He argued that last week’s 30% surge could mark the start of a broader cycle, supported by looser financial conditions, Wall Street’s real-world asset tokenization push, and the potential of AI agents utilizing blockchain technology. To be sure, this thesis relies on an extremely small historical sample size (two instances), and CoinDesk itself noted that past price patterns offer no guarantee of future returns.

Strategy Sells $2 Billion in Shares, Sets Up Dedicated Cash Fund, but Buys No More BTC

Meanwhile, Strategy, the largest Bitcoin treasury company, took the opposite route. It sold 18,261,118 MSTR shares to raise $2.01 billion net (at an average price of ~$109.88 per share, up from $96.48 a week earlier), but bought no additional Bitcoin.

The proceeds were allocated across three areas:

  • $136.4 million to repurchase STRC preferred stock;
  • $300 million directed into the existing USD Reserve;
  • The remaining $1.57 billion transferred to a newly established fund named USD Cash, created on the same day.

The most notable development is USD Cash. Unlike the $5.1 billion USD Reserve (which is restricted to paying preferred dividends and interest obligations), USD Cash has no specific restrictions and is described as liquidity enabling management to respond swiftly to market volatility, including “dislocations in the market for Bitcoin or Strategy’s securities.” In other words, it serves as dry powder for scenarios ranging from buying cheap BTC to repurchasing its own stock.

Strategy’s current position: holding 840,447 BTC unchanged (roughly 4% of total supply, at an average cost basis of $75,385), with no purchases since June and two consecutive weeks without sales (having previously sold a total of 6,948 BTC since May). The past week’s rally dramatically altered its financial picture: with Bitcoin at ~$78,400, its BTC treasury is worth approximately $65.9 billion, representing a $2.6 billion unrealized gain on cost. Just a week prior, with BTC at $63,553, the position sat at an unrealized loss of $9.9 billion; in mid-July, that loss had reached as high as $13 billion. Swings of billions of dollars within days underscore the acute sensitivity of the Bitcoin treasury model to price fluctuations.

Two Strategies, One Common Question

Bitmine is going all-in on a single asset and accelerating to hit its ownership target, accepting heavy concentration risk in ETH. Strategy, on the other hand, is accumulating cash, building a flexible liquidity structure, and sitting on the sidelines at current price levels. One is aggressively buying; the other is stockpiling dry powder without pulling the trigger.

It is premature to judge which approach is right. Bitmine is buying heavily out of conviction in Ethereum’s long-term growth narrative; Strategy is raising cash to manage risk across an already massive balance sheet. Yet both are actively reshaping the role of public corporations as crypto treasury holders, and how they navigate the heightened price volatility of the past week offers an instructive case study.