Bitmine will stop buying ether at 5% of supply: ETH falls 5% as the market loses its biggest buyer

What Tom Lee said

Bitmine Immersion Technologies has bought ether every week since June 2025 and in that time has become the world's largest corporate holder of ETH. On October 7 at TOKEN2049, its chairman Tom Lee named the finish line. "We only need to get another 100,000 ETH to get to 5%. Now we're going to stop," he said. The cap is firm: Bitmine will not hold more than 5% of all ether.

Lee stressed that the company hit its target well ahead of plan. "We thought this would take five years. It took us a little over a year," he said, adding that Bitmine had been buying through a bear market the whole time.

When exactly the buying ends depends on the pace. Last week Bitmine spent about $41 million on ether. The remaining 100,000 ETH at about $2,580 come to roughly $258 million, so at the same pace the company needs another 6-7 weeks. According to Decrypt, Lee gives the same timeframe himself, which points to the second half of November.

Selling did not come up. Bitmine has said before that once it reaches 5% it may sell its staking rewards to keep its holdings from growing past the cap, but the company has said nothing about selling its core holdings.

How much ether Bitmine holds

Figures as of October 7, according to CoinDesk:

The paper loss has a simple explanation: the company bought most of its ether above today's price. As long as Bitmine does not sell, the loss stays on paper, but the company will also soon stop propping up the price with new purchases.

How the market reacted

Ether fell about 5% in a day, to its lowest level since September 20, while bitcoin lost 2.68%. If you were waiting for a dip, you can buy ether without a trading platform, through a crypto exchange, straight to your own wallet. But the market as a whole read the news one way: a steady buyer is on its way out.

Stocks slid too. According to 24/7 Wall St., Bitmine shares (BMNR) dropped 7% to $24.49. Other companies with crypto on their balance sheets followed: SharpLink lost 5% to $8.99, and Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, also fell 5% to $155.79. BlackRock's ether exchange-traded fund ETHA slipped 4%, even though the S&P 500 was down only 0.35%.

The news landed on a rough day for markets. Brent crude rose above $101 a barrel, US Treasury yields climbed, and overnight bitcoin slid below $84,000. We broke that down this morning: bitcoin's overnight drop below $84,000 cost traders $487 million in long liquidations, and ether took the bigger hit back then as well.

Why this matters for ether

For more than a year, Bitmine was the most predictable source of demand for ETH. Every week the company bought ether no matter what the price did, and that money held up the market even in weak weeks. In six to eight weeks this buyer will be gone, and the price will depend on ordinary demand: exchange-traded funds, staking, network fees and individual buyers who buy ETH with USDT straight to their own wallets.

The story carries a lesson that goes beyond one company. Corporate buying, whether Bitmine with ether or Strategy with bitcoin, can look endless, but every buyer of this kind has a limit: shareholder money, borrowing capacity or, as here, a share announced in advance. When such a buyer stops, the market loses a support that many had come to take for granted.

For ether itself, the fundamentals have not changed: the network is running, the Glamsterdam upgrade is in testing, and developers are working through a roadmap that runs to 2029. What changes is only the balance of supply and demand over the coming months.

What it means for ether holders

If your ether sits in your own wallet, the news changes nothing about your coins: you have as many as you did yesterday, they are just worth less for now. What happens next depends on your plan, and that call is yours. This is not investment advice, just three common scenarios:

• Hold. If you bought ether to keep for years, losing one buyer matters for the price over the next few weeks, not for your plans.
• Reduce risk. You can move part of your ether into a stablecoin and wait out the volatility in dollars.
• Buy more. If you see the dip as an opportunity, you can add ether to your own wallet without a trading account and without leverage.

If you are thinking about moving into bitcoin, we walked through the opposite direction in detail in our guide on how to convert bitcoin to ethereum: the steps are the same, only the pair is different.

How to exchange ether without registration or a trading account

With VertEXchange, you start an exchange without an account, email or phone number: pick a pair, paste your wallet address, and see the rate and final amount before you send. The service does not hold your coins; they go straight to your address, so neither a trading platform nor a margin call can sell them for you in the next overnight crash.

• The fixed rate holds for about 15 minutes: on days when ether moves several percent in an hour, the amount will not change while your transfer confirms.
• If the exchange does not go through, the coins return to your refund address.
• The personal fields of the transaction are deleted 24 hours after it completes, and your exchange history stays only in your browser.
• Questions are handled in the support chat on every page, using your exchange code.

To wait out the volatility in dollars, you can exchange ETH to USDT TRC20 without registration. And if you want to move part of your ether into bitcoin, you can swap ETH for BTC at a fixed rate.

FAQ

Why did ether drop on October 7?

One reason is that Bitmine chairman Tom Lee announced the company's ETH purchases will soon end: it will stop at 5% of circulating supply. The backdrop included rising oil prices, high US Treasury yields and overnight liquidations across the market.

How much ether does Bitmine hold?

As of October 7, 2026, about 6,016,414 ETH, which is 4.9% of circulating supply and roughly $15.5 billion at the current price.

When will Bitmine stop buying ether?

Once it buys about 100,000 more ETH and reaches 5%. At last week's pace of about $41 million, that will take 6-7 weeks.

Will Bitmine sell its ether?

Tom Lee did not talk about selling the core holdings. The company has said before that it may sell staking rewards so that its share does not rise above 5%.

What's next for the ether price?

Nobody knows. The market is losing a steady buyer, but the price is set by total demand, not by one company. This is not investment advice or a forecast.