Ethereum Drops 5% After Tom Lee Says Bitmine Will Stop Purchases

The price of Ethereum (CRYPTO: $ETH) is down 5% on news that crypto treasury firm Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: $BMNR) plans to stop buying the second-largest digital asset.

Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said at a conference in Singapore that the company will stop accumulating ETH once its holdings reach 5% of the token's circulating supply.

Lee was adamant that Bitmine has set a hard ceiling on its accumulations of Ethereum, which is fast approaching the 5% target.

"We only need to get another 100,000 ETH to get to 5%," said Lee. "Now we're going to stop," he added.

Over the last week, Bitmine bought $41 million U.S. of ETH, bringing its holdings to 6,016,414 tokens, or slightly more than 4.9% of the 122.1 million circulating supply.

Bitmine's holdings of Ethereum are currently worth $15.5 billion U.S.

"We thought this would take five years," Lee said at the conference. "It took us a little over a year. More importantly, we did this all in the middle of a bear market."

Analysts estimate that Bitmine will reach its 5% target before year's end, removing one of the most aggressive buyers of Ethereum from the market.

The end of Bitmine's purchases matters because the company has provided steady demand for Ethereum and supported the price of ETH for much of this year.