Bitmine Immersion Technologies expanded its Ethereum position again last week as institutional activity around Ether kept building.
According to a Monday press release, the Las Vegas-based digital infrastructure firm said it added 71,179 ETH over the past week, lifting total holdings to 4.732 million ETH, or about 3.92 percent of the circulating supply.
Meanwhile, the update came as Ethereum also showed stronger short-term price action than Bitcoin over the weekend. The asset traded above $2,050 at press time after rising over the past 24 hours, while BTC stayed under pressure after falling from near $70,000 on Friday to about $65,100 during the weekend sell-off.
The latest Bitmine purchase, the launch of its MAVAN staking platform, and a fresh staking move by the Ethereum Foundation kept Ether in focus across the market.
Bitmine increases ETH holdings
Bitmine Immersion Technologies said its total crypto, cash, and “moonshots” holdings reached $10.7 billion as of March 29, 2026. The company’s treasury includes 4,732,082 ETH, 197 BTC, $961 million in cash, a $200 million stake in Beast Industries, and a $102 million stake in Eightco Holdings, which Bitmine referred to as part of its “moonshots” portfolio.
The company said the Ethereum position now places it over 78 percent of the way toward its stated goal of holding 5 percent of the ETH supply.
Tom Lee, chairman of Bitmine, said the company has raised the pace of Ether purchases during the past four weeks.
“Bitmine has maintained the increased pace of ETH buys in each of the past four weeks, as our base case is ETH is in the final stages of the ‘mini-crypto winter.’ In the past week, we acquired 71,179 ETH compared to an average of 45k to 50k weekly prior to that,” Lee said.
The company also said Bitmine remains the largest Ethereum treasury holder and the second-largest public crypto treasury firm overall behind Strategy.
Bitmine linked part of its market view to the broader macro setting. Lee said crypto and ETH have performed better than equities during the current Iran war, while gold has lagged.
“Crypto is demonstrating itself to be a good ‘war time’ store of value,” he added.
Lee pointed out rising oil prices remain a headwind for both equities and crypto until markets gain more confidence on the path of energy prices.
The company’s latest update also pointed to stock market interest around BMNR. According to Bitmine, BMNR traded about $920 million in daily dollar volume on a five-day average basis as of March 27.
The firm claimed that activity ranked the stock around 100th among more than 5,700 U.S.-listed stocks, which it used to support its claim that BMNR offers high trading liquidity to public market investors seeking Ethereum exposure.
Staking becomes a larger part of Bitmine’s Ethereum model
Bitmine said 3,142,643 ETH from its treasury is now staked, with a value of about $6.3 billion at $2,005 per ETH. Based on current staking activity, the company said annualized staking rewards stand near $177 million.
Lee said Bitmine’s current staked balance equals about 66 percent of the Ether it holds, while the full staking program could generate about $266 million a year if the company stakes its full Ethereum balance through MAVAN and partner platforms.
The company launched MAVAN, or the Made in America VAlidator Network, on March 25. Bitmine described the platform as an institutional-grade staking network built for security, performance, and resilience.
While Bitmine created MAVAN to support its own treasury, the company said it plans to expand the platform to serve institutional investors, custodians, and ecosystem partners that want staking infrastructure built for larger portfolios.
Bitmine also compared its staking rate to the broader market. Lee said the Composite Ethereum Staking Rate, or CESR, stood at 2.79 percent, while Bitmine’s own seven-day yield reached 2.80 percent on an annualized basis.
That gap remains narrow, but the company presented it as proof that its staking operation can perform in line with broader Ethereum staking benchmarks while also adding recurring yield to its treasury model.
Ethereum Foundation steps up staking activity
The Ethereum Foundation also added to the market’s focus on staking after on-chain data showed it sent 22,517 ETH into the Beacon Deposit Contract on Monday.
Arkham Intelligence data showed the foundation split the move into 11 separate deposits of about 2,047 ETH each. The total value of those transfers reached about $46.2 million, making it the foundation’s largest single staking move so far.
The foundation began its staking program in February with a first deposit of 2,016 ETH and later added a smaller 31 ETH deposit.
Before Monday’s move, the foundation had staked about 24,564 ETH in total and had already said it planned to stake 70,000 ETH over time. The new deposits show that the foundation has moved faster than before and has started to scale the plan rather than add small amounts over time.
The foundation said staking rewards will support research, ecosystem development, and community grants. That model gives the treasury a way to generate income while reducing the need to sell ETH into the market to fund operations.
The shift addresses long-running criticism from parts of the Ethereum community that often reacted negatively when the foundation sold Ether during periods of market weakness.
Monday’s staking activity followed a separate treasury transaction involving Bitmine. The Ethereum Foundation sold 5,000 ETH to Bitmine in an OTC deal at an average price of $2,042.96 per ETH, for a total of about $10.2 million.
ETH outperforms BTC
Ether’s price action added another layer to the story. ETH traded at about $2,065 with a 24-hour trading volume near $14.9 billion, reflecting a 4 percent daily gain even as it remained down almost 4 percent over the past week.
Bitcoin traded at about $67,500 with a 24-hour volume of $34.78 billion, up 1 percent on the day but down 4 percent over seven days (per CoinGecko’s data). That left ETH ahead of BTC on a short-term basis during the weekend.
The move came as the broader crypto market stayed sensitive to headlines around Iran and energy markets. President Donald Trump said the United States was in “serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran.”
President Trump also warned that if no deal happens, the United States would “blow up and completely obliterate all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, Kharg Island, and possibly all desalinization plants.” Those remarks kept war-related risk in focus across financial markets.
Bitcoin’s drop from near $70,000 to around $65,112 during the weekend helped trigger more than $370 million in crypto liquidations, according to CoinGlass data.