Bitmine Says It Will Stop Buying Ether at 5% of Supply. Depending on Which Supply Figure You Use, It Is About 19,000 ETH Away or About 89,000 ETH Away

At the Token2049 conference in Singapore on Wednesday 7 October 2026, Bitmine chairman Tom Lee said the company will stop buying ether once it holds 5% of the token’s supply, a limit he called a hard cap, according to Decrypt and Cryptopolitan. Headlines compressed that into a simple stop. What he described is a conditional plan with a distance still to travel, and the distance depends on a supply number that Bitmine itself has changed. This piece works through the arithmetic, shows why staking rewards matter more to the cap than the headlines suggest, and sets out what none of the coverage can tell us about the effect on ether’s price.

What Lee said, and what Bitmine holds

• Holdings: 6,016,414 ETH as of 4 October 2026, which Bitmine says is about 4.9% of supply (Coingape, Cryptopolitan).
• Last week’s purchase: 15,112 ETH, about $41 million at an ETH price of $2,726 (Coingape). Bitmine says it has bought ether every week since its treasury strategy began on 30 June 2025.
• The gap: Lee said Bitmine is about 100,000 ETH from the threshold, or roughly six to seven more weeks at last week’s pace (Decrypt; Cryptopolitan).
• After the cap: Lee said Bitmine could sell ETH earned through staking to hold its share at 5%. Decrypt quotes him saying the company thought reaching this point would take five years and that it took a little over a year.
• A change of position: Cryptopolitan notes that in August Lee had said Bitmine had no reason to sell ETH and that 5% might not be a limit.

The arithmetic, and the denominator

A percentage of supply needs a supply figure, and Bitmine’s releases have used different ones. On 1 June it cited circulating supply of 120.7 million ETH, at which it held 4.49% (The Block). By its 7 September update the figure was 122.0 million (The Block), and by 5 October it was 122.1 million (Coingape, Cryptopolitan). The reports do not explain why the base rose by 1.4 million tokens in four months. That looks larger than ordinary net issuance would produce, so the method or source may have changed, but we cannot confirm it.

The choice matters because the target is so close. On the 122.1 million figure, 5% is 6,105,000 ETH. Holdings of 6,016,414 are 4.93%, a gap of 88,586 ETH. That is consistent with Lee’s ‘about 100,000’ if he is rounding up, and at last week’s 15,112 ETH it is 5.9 weeks away. On the 120.7 million figure from June, 5% is 6,035,000 ETH, the same holdings are 4.98%, and the gap is only 18,586 ETH, about 1.2 weeks of buying at the same pace. Each additional million tokens in the denominator moves the target by 50,000 ETH. The weekly pace has also slowed sharply: the 7 September update reported 28,086 ETH bought in the prior week (The Block), against 15,112 now. At the September rate the current gap would close in about 3.2 weeks. All of this is our calculation from the reported figures.

Cash does not appear to be the constraint. Coingape cites $643 million of cash and marketable securities. At $2,726 an ETH, the 88,586 ETH gap costs about $241 million, so on paper Bitmine could close it at once if it chose. The slower pace looks like a choice, though the cash may be earmarked for other uses, which the reports do not say.

Staking rewards are the cap’s real mechanism

Cryptopolitan reports that about 5,067,309 ETH, roughly 84% of the treasury, is staked, projected to yield about $363 million a year at a seven-day yield of 2.63%. Converted to tokens, that yield is 5,067,309 × 0.0263, or about 133,000 ETH a year and about 2,560 ETH a week. That is our conversion, and it assumes the yield holds.

This changes how to think about the cap. With no purchases at all, staking rewards would add about 2,560 ETH a week to Bitmine’s holdings, enough to close an 88,586 ETH gap in about 35 weeks. Once Bitmine reaches 5%, holding the line would mean continually selling roughly that amount: about 133,000 ETH a year, or around $360 million at current prices, just to stay level. Lee’s comment about selling staking rewards is therefore not a footnote. A hard cap on a staked treasury is a standing programme of sales, each week equal to about 17% of the most recent weekly purchase (2,560 ÷ 15,112). Whether that matters for the market depends on ether’s trading volume; we did not find a reliable daily volume figure and do not assert one.

What this does to demand for ether, and what it does not

The simple argument is that Bitmine has been the largest steady buyer of ether among treasury companies, and a buyer that stops removes demand. The numbers show how much demand is left to remove. Last week’s $41 million is about 0.26% of the $15.56 billion Bitmine’s holdings were worth with ETH below $2,600 (Coingape). The Block reported on 1 June that earlier in 2026 weekly purchases had ranged from 45,000 to 76,000 ETH, with nearly 112,000 in the week before that report. Against those figures, 15,112 is a fraction. Most of the reduction in Bitmine’s buying has already happened, so an announcement of a limit that is nearly met confirms a slowdown rather than creating one.

Lee’s counter-argument, as reported by Coingape, is that Bitmine’s stock could outperform ether once the company no longer has to raise capital to buy it. Analysts remain positive: Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated an overweight rating with a price target of about $63, per the same article. The position is also under water. Holdings of 6,016,414 ETH worth $15.56 billion, with an unrealised loss of about $4.49 billion (DropsTab data cited by Coingape), imply an average purchase price near $3,330 an ETH ((15.56 + 4.49) ÷ 6.016). The price implied by the valuation, $2,586, is about 22% below that. This is our arithmetic.

What the evidence does not establish

• The price effect. Ether traded near $2,570 on the day of Lee’s remarks during a broad crypto sell-off (Decrypt; Coingape), so no part of the move can be attributed to Bitmine. No source isolates its buying from other flows.
• The right supply figure. We use 122.1 million because Bitmine’s latest release does. A different source for circulating supply would move the gap by tens of thousands of ETH.
• Whether the cap will bind. Lee has changed position since August, and Bitmine’s weekly disclosures will show whether buying actually stops.
• Whether sales of staking rewards will happen, and at what pace. Lee said Bitmine could do this, not that it will.
• Rounded percentages. ‘4.9%’ is 4.93% on our arithmetic, and rounding alone changes the gap by thousands of tokens.