Tom Lee's BitMine Buys $10.2 Million in ETH Directly From Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation has made another ETH sale directly to a publicly traded treasury company, announcing Saturday that it sold some of its own treasury to Tom Lee's BitMine Immersion Technologies.

According to an X post, the Foundation sold 5,000 ETH to BitMine at an average price of $2,042.96 per coin, or just over $10.2 million worth of the second-largest cryptocurrency.

"This sale funds the [Ethereum Foundation's] core operations & activities, including protocol R&D, ecosystem development, community grant funding and more," the Foundation posted, adding that it was part of its "ongoing treasury management activities."

As of last Monday, BitMine said that it held 4,534,563 ETH, making it the largest Ethereum treasury firm with holdings valued around $9.41 billion based on ETH's recent trading price of $2,076.

This is the second time that the Ethereum Foundation has sold part of its holdings to an Ethereum treasury firm, following last July's sale of 10,000 ETH—then valued around $30 million—to Sharplink, currently the second-largest ETH treasury with about $1.75 billion worth of the asset.

The price of Ethereum has fallen dramatically over the past several months, alongside most other top coins, dropping by 58% since hitting a peak of $4,946 last August.

As a result, BitMine and other Ethereum treasury firms—which started accumulating ETH near its peak price last year—are down substantially on their investments, at least on paper. BitMine has an unrealized loss in the ballpark of $7.5 billion, based on its average purchase price for ETH through last November (per an SEC filing) and estimates for purchases since then.

Despite that immense paper loss, BitMine and Chairman Tom Lee have continued to purchase ETH and remain bullish on its prospects.

"Ethereum prices showed resilience this week, in the face of rising war concerns and surging oil prices," said Lee last Monday, in a statement accompanying the firm's latest weekly purchase announcement. "We continue to believe that crypto prices are in the late/final stages of the 'mini-crypto winter.'"

Ethereum is up 5% over the last week and 9% in the last 30 days, per data from CoinGecko. Even with the modest recent rise, users on Myriad—a prediction market platform operated by Decrypt's parent company, Dastan—remain bearish on ETH's short-term prospects, penciling in a 63% chance that Ethereum's next stop is more likely to be $1,500 rather than $3,000.