Bitmine Slows ETH Buying as Price Recovers, Bets on CLARITY Act Passage

Published by James Harris on July 6, 2026July 6, 2026

Bitmine Immersion Technologies now holds 5,742,237 ETH, worth roughly $10 to $10.3 billion at current prices, after adding 42,197 ETH last week for approximately $74 million. The company is at 4.8% of circulating Ethereum supply and expects to cross its 5% target before year-end.

The accumulation pace is worth contextualizing. Earlier this year, Bitmine was posting six-figure weekly ETH purchases. Last week’s buy, while larger than the prior week’s 27,084 ETH, still trails that earlier cadence, which suggests the company is either managing cash deployment more carefully or finding fewer favorable entry points as ETH has recovered. Ethereum outperformed Bitcoin by 6% over the past week after a prolonged decline that started in August, which makes the current accumulation more expensive than it was during that slide. Chairman Thomas Lee has explicitly tied the buying thesis to the CLARITY Act, a U.S. crypto market-structure bill he puts at roughly 50% passage probability on prediction markets, arguing regulatory clarity disproportionately benefits smart-contract platforms. That framing is not idle positioning: if the CLARITY Act advances, Ethereum’s legal status as a commodity rather than a security becomes significantly more settled, which changes the institutional calculus around holding it.

About 85% of Bitmine’s ETH is staked through its own validator network, generating a projected $235 million annually at a 2.68% seven-day yield, which means the treasury is not purely a price bet.

The Strategy Contrast

The timing lands differently because Strategy moved in the opposite direction last week, selling roughly $216 million in Bitcoin to raise cash. Two of the largest corporate digital asset holders are running divergent playbooks simultaneously, one compressing supply on ETH while the other liquidates BTC. That dynamic matters for anyone reading corporate treasury behavior as a directional signal. Bitmine’s Russell 1000 inclusion in June and its NYSE-listed preferred stock offering at a 9.5% dividend suggest the company is building institutional access infrastructure around the ETH position, not just accumulating quietly. If the CLARITY Act stalls or fails, the regulatory thesis Lee has publicly attached to the trade becomes harder to defend, and the position’s scale, roughly 5% of all circulating ETH, leaves very little room to exit without moving the market.

Bitmine said its MAVAN validator network, currently running internal staking operations, may eventually open to outside institutions and custodians, which would convert the treasury infrastructure into a revenue line independent of ETH price.