BitMine's Lee Expects Institutional Crypto Push Despite Ongoing Discount

BitMine added 27,562 ether to its holdings last week. The company now possesses 5.98 million ETH, valued at roughly $16.3 billion. Yet it remains short of the 5% of all Ether supply that it has been pursuing for 15 months.

Chairman Tom Lee believes institutional investors remain underweight in crypto and will increase their allocations before the year closes. The market capitalization of his firm is lower than the value of the digital assets it already holds.

BitMine Buys Ether Weekly but the Goalpost Moves

BitMine presents itself as a long-term crypto accumulator. The firm has purchased ether each week since June 30, 2025, and claims to be 98% toward its goal of owning 5% of all ether in circulation.

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BitMine provided its latest holdings update for September 21, 2026

$17.1 billion in total crypto + "moonshots":
– 5,983,940 ETH at $2,688 per ETH (per @coinbase)
– 212 Bitcoin (BTC)
– $180 million stake in Beast Industries @MrBeast
– $105 million stake in Eightco Holdings…

— Bitmine (NYSE-BMNR) $ETH $BMNP (@BitMNR) September 21, 2026

Ether, however, has no fixed supply. New coins are minted continuously, meaning the 5% target rises as BitMine pursues it.

BeInCrypto pointed out this issue in August. At that time, BitMine was about 251,000 tokens away from its 5% goal.

Since then, the firm has acquired 136,329 ether. It remains approximately 121,000 tokens short.

Lee Expects a Q4 Crypto Influx as Market Discounts His Firm

Lee offers a straightforward argument for those who stayed on the sidelines. Ether has outperformed the S&P 500 by about 65 percentage points since late June.

“Given institutions have underweighted crypto in 2026, partially due to the outperformance of AI stocks in early 2026, we expect institutions to substantially increase their exposure in the final 3 months of 2026,” he said in the company’s latest release.

Investors are not pricing in that expectation. BitMine's crypto, cash, and private holdings total $17.1 billion, while the entire company's market capitalization stood at $15.68 billion as of Friday's close.

Such a discount is not unusual. Many crypto treasury companies trade at a valuation below their asset holdings.

Ether was trading around $2,734 at the time of writing, up more than 6% in the past day. Lee is scheduled to deliver a keynote in Seoul on September 30, with the quarter he anticipates starting the following day.