Tom Lee Says Institutions Are Still Underweight Crypto After Latest BitMine ETH Buy

BitMine bought another 27,562 ether last week. It now holds 5.98 million of the tokens, worth about $16.3 billion. However, they still cannot reach the 5% of Ethereum (ETH) supply it has chased for 15 months.

Chairman Tom Lee says large investors are still underinvested in crypto and will pile in before the year ends. The stock market values his company at less than the crypto it already owns.

BitMine Buys Ether Every Week and the Finish Line Keeps Moving

BitMine describes itself as a company built to accumulate crypto for the long term. It has bought ether every single week since June 30, 2025, and says it is 98% of the way to owning 5% of every ether in existence.

However, ether has no supply limit. New tokens are minted constantly, so the 5% mark climbs while BitMine runs at it.

BeInCrypto flagged this in August. Back then, BitMine’s push toward 5% was roughly 251,000 tokens short of the line.

The company has bought 136,329 ether since. It is still short, by about 121,000.

Lee Bets on a Fourth Quarter Rush While the Market Marks Him Down

Lee has a simple pitch for anyone who sat out. Ether has beaten the S&P 500 by roughly 65 percentage points since the end of June.

“Given institutions have underweighted crypto in 2026, partially due to the outperformance of AI stocks in early 2026, we expect institutions to substantially increase their exposure in the final 3 months of 2026,” he said in the company’s latest release.

Investors are not paying up for that view. BitMine values its crypto, cash and private stakes at $17.1 billion. The whole company was worth $15.68 billion at Friday’s close.

The discount is normal here. Most crypto treasury firms trade below the value of what they hold.

Ether changed hands near $2,734 as of this writing, up by over 6% in the last 24 hours. Lee gives a keynote in Seoul on September 30. The quarter he is betting on begins the next morning.

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