Tom Lee’s BitMine Immersion Technologies has purchased another 10,000 ETH directly from the Ethereum Foundation at $2,387 per coin, lifting its treasury to 4.976 million ETH worth $11.5 billion , and sitting on an unrealized loss of more than $6 billion against ETH’s prior peak.

The transaction, settled OTC on April 24, is the second time in two months the Ethereum Foundation has sold directly to BitMine. March’s deal moved 5,000 ETH at $2,043. Before that, the Foundation sold 10,000 ETH to Sharplink Gaming in July 2025 at $2,572. A pattern is forming: the Foundation is using publicly listed Ethereum treasury companies as its preferred OTC exit channel, allowing it to liquidate ETH for operational funding without moving the spot market. The Foundation’s stated rationale is consistent: the proceeds fund protocol research, ecosystem grants, and community programs under a treasury management policy formalised in June 2025 that explicitly authorised periodic ETH sales.

BitMine’s accumulation over the past four months has been aggressive by any measure. The company added 101,627 ETH worth $233 million in a single week in mid-April via Bitgo , its largest weekly purchase of 2026. It uplisted to the NYSE on April 9 carrying 4.8 million ETH and announced a $4 billion share buyback programme. The April 24 Foundation purchase brings total holdings to 4.976 million ETH, or 4.12% of all ETH in existence, putting the company three quarters of the way toward what Tom Lee has called the Alchemy of 5% , a strategic threshold the company believes will create meaningful supply pressure on the open market.

At current prices near $2,313, BitMine’s position is deeply underwater relative to the $4,946 peak ETH reached during its accumulation period. AInvest’s analysis puts the unrealized loss at more than $6 billion. That is the number that defines every decision BitMine makes until ETH either recovers or the company faces a capital structure problem. The Ethereum Foundation, by contrast, has been selling at prices ranging from $2,043 to $2,572 , all below peak, but funded by ETH it acquired at effectively zero cost years ago. The Foundation’s OTC sales to treasury companies are, from its perspective, entirely rational treasury management. From BitMine’s perspective, buying at these levels is a levered bet that ETH recovers past $4,946 and that 4.12% supply ownership produces the reflexivity that justifies the position.

The dogfooding criticism Tom Lee mentioned in response to negative commentary has a specific edge here. Lee’s own company is the single largest buyer of ETH, and Lee is simultaneously one of the market’s most prominent ETH bulls. When the foundation sells to BitMine OTC, it sidesteps market-impact disclosure obligations that a spot sale would trigger. Whether that arrangement benefits retail ETH holders or concentrates an already concentrated asset further is a question the community has begun asking with increasing frequency.

The BitMine accumulation story is simultaneously bullish and cautionary. Bullish because 4.12% of total supply moving into a publicly listed treasury vehicle with a stated buy-and-hold mandate removes that ETH from circulation and creates a permanent demand signal visible on-chain. Cautionary because concentrated ownership of this magnitude introduces new risks: regulatory scrutiny of market power, liquidity risk if BitMine ever needs to exit, and governance questions about whether a single entity controlling 4% of supply should have any formal voice in protocol decisions. Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy playbook, applied to ETH, is the evident model. That strategy produced extraordinary returns for MSTR shareholders during Bitcoin’s 2024 run. It also produced periods of severe paper losses before recovery. BitMine is in one of those periods now, with $6 billion in unrealized losses and a stated commitment to keep buying. How that resolves will be one of the defining stories of Ethereum’s next cycle.

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