On Monday, Bitmine officially announced that as of November 8, its reserves had reached 6,070,092 ETH. This represents approximately 4.97% of all coins in circulation (a total of 122.2 million). The latest transaction cost the company $20.4 million, based on the current price of $2,134 per Ether. Currently, the total market value of ETH in Bitmine’s portfolio has exceeded $12.9 billion.
If we add up all of the company’s assets—including cash, securities, and cryptocurrency—the total comes to $14.3 billion. This is slightly less than the $14.5 billion reported a week ago, even though the company continued to actively purchase ETH. Since June 2025, when Bitmine launched its reserve accumulation program, it has been buying Ether every week, becoming the largest publicly traded corporate holder of this asset.
The company is only about 40,000 ETH short of its target of 5% ownership. According to Li, once this threshold is crossed, regular purchases will cease. According to data from Bitcoin.com News, Bitmine added 8,573 ETH to its portfolio last week, bringing the total to 6.06 million tokens.
Li sees fundamental changes in Buterin’s stance.
Beyond the numbers, Li highlighted Buterin’s recent speech at the Devcon 8 conference in Mumbai. The Ethereum co-founder emphasized that ETH should be viewed as a store of value and a unit of currency, rather than simply being valued based on transaction fees.
Li believes that these words from the creator of Ethereum mark an important turning point. This explains how ETH will rise in price during the next cycle, which will be driven by artificial intelligence and tokenization. In his view, Ethereum’s appeal lies in its role as a reliable collateral within the network, especially now that traditional financial institutions are increasingly turning their attention to blockchain. Lee noted that ETH is not just another token with a cash flow like LIT or HYPE, but a pure and stable collateral.
In his Sunday post on X, Buterin elaborated on this idea. He pointed out that the fee-burning mechanism does not create the most stable basis for assessing an asset’s value, as many had previously thought. According to him, attempts to artificially increase burning could even hinder the network’s decentralization and stability.
Instead, Buterin suggested focusing on privacy, decentralization, security, and the long-term stability of Ethereum. It is these factors that make ETH a good savings vehicle. He has no objection to the current burning process but advises against using the volume of burned tokens as the primary indicator of economic value.
Li is confident that this interpretation confirms the soundness of Bitmine’s strategy, especially against the backdrop of the development of tokenized financial instruments. According to him, the concept of ETH as a savings vehicle fits perfectly with the network’s future development and the asset’s role in the upcoming tokenization supercycle.
Incidentally, Bitmine reported that 5,227,037 ETH, or about 86% of its holdings, are currently staked. According to the company’s calculations, the annual income from this process currently stands at $309 million, and if the entire amount of ETH were utilized, the figure could rise to $359 million. Bitmine is also expanding its MAVAN validator network, which provides staking infrastructure for both the company itself and institutional clients.
All these purchases are taking place amid market volatility. Last week, Li commented on the $6.3 billion Binance hack, noting that the only slight drop in the price of ETH following the incident demonstrates the market’s high resilience.
Despite price fluctuations, Bitmine remains the world’s second-largest public company in terms of crypto reserves, trailing only Strategy with its $63 billion in BTC investments. Bitmine continues to move steadily toward the completion of its large-scale strategy to accumulate Ether.