Ether steadies as BitMine adds

Ether traded just above the $2,000 mark on Sunday, holding a level that traders have treated as a key psychological floor, while BitMine Immersion Technologies’ continued accumulation of the token added to a broader argument that institutional buyers still see value in the market after a bruising first quarter.

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market value was priced at about $2,055 in Sunday trading, little changed on the day after moving between roughly $2,047 and $2,075 intraday. That leaves Ether above the lows seen in February, when Bloomberg reported that the token had fallen as far as $1,746 during a wider crypto rout that marked its longest monthly losing streak since Bloomberg began tracking the asset in 2018.

What has changed since then is not a clean break into a new rally but a shift in the balance of signals. BitMine, the New York-listed company that has turned itself into one of the most aggressive corporate buyers of Ether, said on March 30 that its crypto holdings had reached 4.732 million tokens and that its staked Ether alone stood at 3,142,643 coins, valued at $6.3 billion at a reference price of $2,005 per token. The company said it now owns 3.92% of Ether supply and had launched its MAVAN staking platform on March 25.

That buying pace has stood out even within crypto’s corporate treasury race. CoinDesk reported on March 30 that BitMine had bought more than 71,000 Ether over the previous week, describing it as the company’s biggest weekly purchase of 2026 while some other digital-asset treasury groups pulled back. BitMine’s own statements through March show a clear pattern: the company kept adding Ether as the token swung between about $1,965 and $2,185, suggesting management was willing to build exposure during weakness rather than chase momentum after a breakout.

Thomas “Tom” Lee, BitMine’s chairman, has framed that strategy in unusually direct terms. In company statements published through March, Lee said BitMine would “continue to steadily acquire ETH and optimise the yield” on those holdings, while also arguing that large-scale staking could turn the treasury into a recurring earnings engine. The company said annual staking rewards could exceed $266 million at current scale assumptions, a claim that helps explain why equity investors have treated BitMine less as a conventional mining business and more as a leveraged listed vehicle for Ether exposure.

For Ether itself, the significance goes beyond one company’s balance sheet. Corporate demand matters because Ethereum no longer relies on mining in the old sense; its investment case is now tied more closely to staking, network usage and long-term confidence in the chain’s role as the base layer for decentralised finance and tokenised assets. The Ethereum Foundation said in February that its 2026 protocol priorities remain centred on scaling the main network, scaling blob capacity and improving user experience, while a March roadmap update argued that Ethereum’s main chain would scale by orders of magnitude while remaining the core of the on-chain economy.

That structural case has helped offset a harder macro backdrop, though only partially. Crypto markets have been grappling with a stronger dollar, uneven ETF flows, geopolitical stress and persistent caution after months of losses. Analysts cited by Bloomberg said Ether had erased around $345 billion in market value by early February from the previous year’s peak, illustrating how far sentiment had deteriorated before buyers began defending the $2,000 area again.

Even so, the bullish narrative remains conditional rather than settled. Ether is holding above an important support zone, but the token has yet to deliver the kind of decisive upward move that would convince sceptics the downtrend has truly broken. BitMine’s accumulation offers a vote of confidence, not proof of a sustained new cycle. The stronger reading is that a class of institutional buyers is treating sub-$2,100 Ether as attractive enough to absorb supply, especially when that exposure can also be staked for yield.