For most of Ethereum’s history, the Ethereum Foundation was its largest identifiable institutional holder — a nonprofit steward sitting on a significant ETH reserve, occasionally selling to fund development, and broadly seen as a stabilizing presence in the network’s governance. That dynamic has fundamentally shifted. Corporate treasury firms have quietly surpassed the Foundation in scale, their positions are growing faster than any single entity in the network’s history, and every accumulation event is visible on-chain in real time.

A new class of ETH holder

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BitMine Immersion Technologies, a publicly traded company led by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, has accumulated approximately 4.5 million ETH — a position valued at roughly $9.4 billion at current prices and representing a meaningful share of ETH’s circulating supply. SharpLink Gaming, another publicly traded firm that began its ETH accumulation strategy in mid-2025, holds approximately 865,000 ETH. A third company, The Ether Machine, controls roughly 497,000 ETH. All three positions are visible and attributable through Arkham’s blockchain intelligence platform, which tracks labeled entity wallets across the Ethereum network and logs balance changes in real time.

By comparison, the Ethereum Foundation holds just over 200,000 ETH following a series of structured sales. The Foundation’s treasury management framework targets roughly 15% annual spend from its holdings and has recently involved direct OTC sales to corporate buyers: 10,000 ETH to SharpLink Gaming in July 2025, and 5,000 ETH to BitMine in early 2026 at an average price of approximately $2,043 per token, raising around $10.2 million to fund core operations, protocol research, and ecosystem grants. Both transactions were executed over-the-counter to avoid open-market price impact, and both transferred supply directly to entities that have publicly committed to long-term accumulation strategies.

The OTC transfer model

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The mechanics of the Foundation’s OTC sales to corporate buyers reveal something about how large ETH positions are being managed across the ecosystem. Rather than selling into open markets — which would create immediate downward price pressure and signal potential distribution to the broader market — the Foundation has chosen counterparties that will absorb the supply and hold it. For the Foundation, this converts ETH into operational capital without triggering sell-side dynamics. For the buyers, it provides a route to scale their positions at negotiated prices without moving the market against themselves.

Data from Arkham shows both BitMine and SharpLink among the largest identifiable on-chain entities by USD value — a ranking that reflects the speed and scale of their accumulation over the past twelve months. BitMine’s chairman Tom Lee has maintained a publicly bullish stance on Ethereum despite the company sitting on substantial paper losses as ETH’s price has declined from its 2025 highs. SharpLink began accumulating ETH in July 2025 and has continued adding to its position through subsequent market weakness. The behavior of both firms fits a pattern familiar from Bitcoin treasury strategies: conviction-driven accumulation that treats price drawdowns as buying opportunities rather than warning signs.

Governance and concentration risk

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The scale of corporate ETH accumulation raises questions that go beyond market structure. Ethereum’s proof-of-stake consensus mechanism gives staked ETH holders influence over network governance — not through a formal on-chain voting system in most cases, but through the economic weight that comes with controlling a significant share of staked supply. BitMine has stated an ambition to control approximately 5% of ETH’s circulating supply. Critics have flagged the voting-power concentration this could create, particularly if corporate holders with shareholder obligations and commercial interests diverge from the Foundation’s historically neutral approach to protocol stewardship.

The concern is not hypothetical. When an entity controlling 5% of staked supply has quarterly earnings pressure, a board with fiduciary duties, and investors expecting a return on capital, its incentives around protocol decisions — fee structures, staking yield changes, governance proposals — may not align with those of a nonprofit whose mandate is the long-term health of an open network. Whether that tension materializes depends on how these companies exercise their positions over time. What is already clear is that the question itself is new: Ethereum has never before had corporate treasury holders operating at this scale.

What this means for markets

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For traders and analysts, the rise of corporate ETH treasuries creates a new layer of on-chain intelligence with direct market implications. Unlike retail holders or anonymous wallets, these entities are labeled, their acquisitions are public, and their balance changes are trackable with a precision that centralized exchange data cannot match. When BitMine adds 168,000 ETH in a single month, or when SharpLink routes a purchase through Coinbase Prime, that activity appears in on-chain data before it appears in any regulatory filing. The on-chain record precedes the disclosure.

The practical signal for traders is in the flow data. Large, sustained inflows to labeled corporate treasury addresses over multiple weeks indicate structural accumulation — a buyer that is not going away and is not price-sensitive in the near term. That kind of demand profile is analytically distinct from short-term speculative buying or exchange-driven volume, and it shapes how thoughtful participants model the ETH supply picture over a relevant time horizon.

Arkham Exchange integrates this intelligence layer directly into its trading infrastructure, reflecting the growing consensus that on-chain entity data is as relevant to ETH market structure as order book data or derivatives positioning. In a market where the largest holders are now publicly traded companies with transparent wallet histories and public financial statements, the Arkham entity explorer provides a unified view of how supply is moving between the Foundation, corporate treasuries, and the broader market — intelligence that was simply unavailable to any participant five years ago.

This content is provided for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. AFP editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.