Ethereum: BitMine Already Holds 4.8% of ETH Supply
He who embraces too much, holds poorly. BitMine, the Ethereum treasury company led by Tom Lee, has just reached a new symbolic milestone: 5.79 million ETH in reserve, representing 4.8% of the total circulating supply. The 5% mark is now within reach. However, the figure that truly deserves attention is not that one. It lies in the distribution of this treasure: 85% of these ethers are now staked, the mechanism that secures the network in exchange for a yield. And this mass alone reshapes the power dynamics on Ethereum.
Key points of this article:
- BitMine has crossed a symbolic threshold with 5.79 million ETH in reserve, representing a significant share of the Ethereum market.
- BitMine's accumulation and staking strategy raises concerns about the centralization of power on the Ethereum network.
Yesterday, BitMine added 9,946 ETH last week, bringing its total holdings to 5,787,414 tokens, for a total treasure of $11.8 billion across all asset classes. In the same move, the company repurchased 6.1 million of its own shares. A classic signal of confidence sent to the markets, almost anecdotal compared to the other figure in the announcement: 4,917,189 ETH placed in staking, or 85% of the treasure.
Let’s quickly recall the mechanism for those who might not know: staking ETH means locking it up to run a validator that validates the network's blocks, in exchange for an annual yield. BitMine currently earns about $254 million per year from staking revenue, according to data provided by the company itself. Pure rent, backed by the security of the network that it helps to ensure.
This is where the problem lies. According to staking statistics compiled by Datawallet, approximately 40.9 million ETH are currently staked across the entire network, which is 33.56% of the total supply. Relating the 4.92 million ETH staked by BitMine to this total yields a stark result: just over 12% of all Ethereum staking concentrated in the hands of a single publicly traded company.
To provide a scale of comparison: Lido, the giant of liquid staking (where staked ETH remains represented by a tradable token), holds about 22%. Binance caps at 9.15%. Coinbase barely reaches 5.12%. In just a few months, BitMine has thus risen above two of the largest centralized exchanges in the market based on this single criterion. And without much real discussion about it.
Ethereum has spent years wary of the concentration of validation power in too few hands. The proof: a self-limiting proposal from Lido to 22% was even submitted for governance vote in June, rejected by 99.8% but revealing a real discomfort. However, the debate has so far almost exclusively focused on liquid staking protocols. BitMine changes the game: here is a corporate treasury, motivated by a goal of accumulation for stock market purposes, that becomes a systemic player in the security of the network along the way. No one had really seen it coming from this angle.
Tom Lee's reasoning remains, on paper, unassailable: accumulate, stake, collect the yield, buy back its own shares with the surplus. But at the scale at which BitMine now operates, this individual choice becomes a collective variable for the entire network. If the treasury were to face difficulties, urgently selling a position of this size could weigh heavily on the concerned validators. A scenario that, while not imminent, deserves to be monitored with the same rigor as the ongoing debate about the centralization of staking that has already been stirring the ecosystem for months.
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