Ether is about to lose a steady buyer as Tom Lee says Bitmine will stop token purchases

Ether ETH$2,571.18, the second-largest cryptocurrency, is about to lose one of its most persistent sources of demand as Ethereum-focused digital asset treasury firm Bitmine BMNR$24.90·Market Closed will soon stop accumulating the token.

Bitmine chairman Tom Lee, speaking Wednesday at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, said the firm will stop accumulating ETH once its holdings reach 5% of the token’s circulating supply, setting a hard ceiling on a buying spree that has made the company one of the world’s largest ETH holders.

“We only need to get another 100,000 ETF to get to 5%,” he said. “Now we're going to stop,” he added.

Bitmine is already almost at that threshold. In its latest update, the company said Monday that it bought another $41 million in ETH last week, bringing its holdings to 6,016,414 ETH, or roughly 4.9% of the 122.1 million tokens in circulation. At ether’s Wednesday price around $2,580, that stack is worth about $15.5 billion.

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