The latest deal was priced at an average of $2,292.15 per ETH, raising about $22.9 million for the non-profit organisation behind Ethereum’s core development ecosystem. It followed a 10,000 ETH sale one week earlier at about $2,387 per token, taking the two back-to-back transactions to roughly $47 million. A separate March transaction involving 5,000 ETH at about $2,043 per token means BitMine has bought about 25,000 ETH from the foundation across three disclosed OTC deals this year.
The foundation said the proceeds would support protocol research and development, ecosystem programmes, community grants and other operational requirements. The decision to sell directly to BitMine rather than through exchanges limited immediate market disruption, but it still triggered debate among ETH holders over treasury timing, transparency and the appropriate balance between funding development and retaining exposure to Ethereum’s native asset.
The sale comes at a delicate point for Ethereum’s staking market. Validator exit requests have risen sharply, with more than 430,000 ETH waiting to leave staking and withdrawal delays stretching to about a week. The increase followed turbulence across decentralised finance, including heavy losses from bridge and restaking-related exploits that pushed some investors to reassess the risk of locking capital in yield-generating products.
Yet the picture is not one of broad abandonment. The queue for new validators remains far larger than the exit queue, with several million ETH waiting to enter staking. Total staked ETH is still above 38 million tokens, representing roughly a third of supply, while Ethereum’s current staking yield is below 3 per cent. That combination points to a market in transition rather than a simple flight from staking: some capital is moving away from higher-risk restaking structures, while large institutions continue to seek protocol-level yield.
BitMine has become the most visible corporate buyer in that shift. The US-listed company, chaired by Fundstrat’s Thomas “Tom” Lee, has transformed itself from a mining-linked business into the world’s largest Ethereum treasury vehicle. Its holdings reached about 5.18 million ETH as of early May, equivalent to roughly 4.29 per cent of Ethereum’s supply. More than 4.36 million ETH has been staked, representing over 84 per cent of its holdings and generating annualised staking revenue close to $297 million at current yield assumptions.
The company’s strategy is modelled in part on the corporate crypto-treasury playbook popularised in the Bitcoin market, but with an added yield component. Unlike passive corporate holders, BitMine is attempting to build a validator-based business around its ETH balance sheet through its Made in America Validator Network, known as MAVAN. Its stated ambition is to control 5 per cent of Ethereum’s supply, a target that would give it unusual influence among public-market vehicles tied to the network.
That concentration is prompting mixed reactions. Supporters argue that large corporate treasuries can deepen liquidity, broaden Wall Street access to Ethereum exposure and create a long-term buyer base at a time when exchange-traded fund flows and retail demand remain uneven. Critics warn that major ETH holdings clustered in a handful of companies could complicate Ethereum’s decentralisation narrative, particularly if corporate validators become systemically important to network security.
For the Ethereum Foundation, the optics are more sensitive. The organisation is expected to finance long-term development while avoiding the impression that it is calling market tops or transferring strategic influence to selected counterparties. Its own treasury position has shifted over the past year as it moved part of its ETH into staking while continuing to liquidate tokens for operating needs. The foundation has allocated 70,000 ETH to staking and still holds tens of thousands of ETH, but its repeated sales have revived community concerns over runway management.
Arabian Post – Crypto News Network
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