Bitmine splashes out another $238 million to buy Ethereum! Tom Lee hails: “Crypto spring is here!”

The world’s largest corporate Ethereum holder, Bitmine (BMNR), bought an additional 101,745 ETH last week. The company’s chairman, Tom Lee, stated that even though market sentiment remains subdued, a new wave of the “crypto spring” has quietly begun.
According to a statement released on Monday, Bitmine’s total ETH holdings have surpassed 5.18 million, accounting for approximately 4.29% of the total ETH supply.
Currently, the total scale of cryptocurrencies and cash assets held by Bitmine has reached $13.1 billion. Besides holding a large amount of ETH, the company also owns 200 Bitcoin, $700 million in cash and equity, including stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings.
Based on the current market price, the latest purchase of ETH by Bitmine is valued at about $238 million, continuing the company’s pattern of large weekly acquisitions.
Bitmine’s confidence to make such heavy bets at this moment stems from its market trend judgment. Tom Lee believes that the cryptocurrency market is gradually emerging from the “mini winter” of the past few months. He pointed out that market conditions are improving, and positive progress has also been reported regarding the U.S. digital asset regulation bill, the “CLARITY Act.”
In his statement, he explained: “The U.S. Senate recently released a compromise version of the CLARITY Act. Although the new version prohibits paying interest or yields on stored assets, it allows providers to offer rewards based on ‘actual transactions or activities’ to balance and protect the interests of existing deposit institutions (i.e., traditional banks).”

For us, this compromise is basically acceptable, and we are very much looking forward to seeing the bill pass smoothly in 2026.

He also mentioned that on the decentralized prediction market Polymarket, traders are betting that the CLARITY Act will pass this year with a probability exceeding 60%.
Tom Lee emphasized: “In our view, the crypto spring has already begun. Similar to previous cycles, even if cryptocurrency prices rise, investor sentiment and confidence remain low and bearish.”
Tom Lee pointed out that Ethereum is benefiting from two long-term trends: one is the wave of tokenization, which brings financial assets onto the blockchain; the other is the explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. He expects that future AI systems will seek neutral and open blockchain networks for payments and identity verification, which will significantly increase the practical application demand for the Ethereum network.
Additionally, Tom Lee also mentioned that since the outbreak of the Iran conflict, ETH has outperformed traditional stock markets, indicating that ETH is gradually being viewed as an asset with both “store of value” and “medium of exchange” properties.